One night the theme around here was:
You do the crime... you pay the time:
You do the crime... you pay the time:
In this case "time," = clean the entire bathroom instead of read in bed while Aly and Truman sleep.
It took us a full hour (We are trying to raise 'don't just get the job done, get the job done right' kind of people) and honestly we enjoyed ourselves most of the time. He liked it so much that he volunteered to help me do this particular chore each Saturday.
While I outwardly praised his good attitude I inwardly worried that maybe I wasn't the genius mother I thought I was and that this punishment wasn't going to have the proper effect?
But as we talked at the top of the stairs afterwards about the whole affair he admitted that as much fun as he had cleaning the bathroom he wouldn't want to do it every night and miss getting to read... therefore a change in behavior was in his best interest.Whew!
And on a positive note... he now knows how to properly clean the bathroom! Add that to the list of possible Saturday Morning Chores!
2 comments:
Good for you and Jack! I tried to teach the same principle to Eva (on a slightly different scale...). Whenever she intentionally makes a mess or throws food etc, she has to stick around to clean it up herself. But since she thinks it's FUN to clean up after herself it isn't much of a punishment! It must be a life-long parenting principle...
Oh dear! the crime must have been pretty big! :) Way to go, teaching him to do the time!
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