Discipline & Drama

I often wonder who discipline is harder on. Me or my children. I'm tired, I'm frazzled, and I'm in no mood to be firm. However, I want my kids to be good kids. So I do what I say and I be the mean momma. I hate it. I know it's necessary.

Tonight was rough. Kevin was taking Eric and Mark to Home Depot. Mark punched Eric while they were getting shoes on. Apparently because Mark wanted to go by himself with Kevin, leaving Eric behind. Sigh. Somebody shoot me now. Because "we don't hit in our family" is one of our most important rules we told Mark he wasn't going to Home Depot. As you can imagine, he didn't take it well. At all. In starts the "explaining" (read: shrieking) in a high pitched voice "telling" us that it's not fair and he wants to go. So, I pretend to be calm. Sure, cool as cucumber, that's me. "Mark, go get your jammies on. We don't throw fits." (That's another biggie in the house rules. Broken a lot, but it's on the list, nonetheless.) More explaining. The tantrum escalates as Kevin and Eric leave to go to Home Depot leaving me to deal with the drama at home. Ohhhh the drama. As I told Mark (calmly) that he needed to get his jammies on (NOW!) he started flipping out about dessert. We don't generally have dessert but as both sets of Grandparents sent candy for Easter I was going to let them have a piece each before bed. (I try to be nice.) So, since he brought it up, I told him (still calm... my blood pressure was raising, but my voice was calm) that if he didn't get his jammies on he would lose his dessert. GASP... horror of horrors the fit continued. I wasn't surprised. Growing tired of the nonsense and quickly losing my ability to be the calm assertive momma I walked him to bed, watched him get his jammies on and kissed him good night. I wish I could say it ended there but then he started with the "Pleeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase give me (sob) one (sob) more (sob) chance," making me feel like dirt and contemplate just for a minute if I should just give him a piece of stupid chocolate. Of course, I couldn't and I didn't but I sure thought about it.

FINALLY the kid went to sleep and I'm sitting here in relative quiet eating chocolate. What? I didn't throw any fits today even if I did think about it.