Davan saved Max's bacon last night. Max, it must be said, did quite well yesterday. We had the super smooth morning and good swimming followed by an okay evening. All-in-all, he had a good day. However, he hadn't earned that last sticker to get the black box back with his shoes that he needed for basketball practice. I really wanted him to get it, but he just didn't give me a reason at all.
After dinner, as Davan and I were leaving for her gymnastics class, I said to Max, "Good-bye, Cutie-Pie and I really hope you get that last sticker so you can go to basketball."
Davan spoke up and said, "Max did something really nice for me yesterday. When we were at the homeschool group, some boys were chasing us (Davan and two of her friends) around. They were friends of Max's and he got them to stop. I think he should probably get a sticker for that."
I concurred and Max got his 10th sticker and, thus, had the proper shoes for practice.
Now, after the first 10 stickers, when Max earned the black box in time for his basketball game, I let him know we'd continue with the sticker program. I wrote up a reward list that he could choose from ever 10 stickers. Plus, ever 40 stickers earns a couple of hours out with either Mom or Dad. For 10 stickers, he can choose to get his stuff out of the black box, play with Mom or Dad for a set amount of time - whatever he wants, not have to clean his room for a day, or a chocolate -cherry smoothy for an after school snack.
Apparently, though, these things are not enough incentive unless he's lost all of his shoes because he hasn't bothered to try to earn more. In fact, he was a piece of work this morning. He took right up to the timer to get dressed. He cried because I wouldn't let him get something for show and tell - the rule being that he has to have it ready the night before. He fussed and fussed because I game him tangelo slices for his breakfast fruit. They were actually left over from his snack yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday afternoon, Davan was ravenously hungry after she swam for an hour and forty minutes. She was tearing through food and looking for more. I asked Max if he wanted to eat his tangelos or if he wasn't interested. He said, "I'm going to eat them!" So, Davan didn't get them and she'd have totally eaten them for him.
Thus, he got them this morning. Well, folks, it turns out that he hates tangelos, which is kind of funny as he was very keen to eat them yesterday instead of letting Davan have them.
So, he opted not to eat breakfast rather than have to face tangelos. He heaved big sighs and complained. He glared bitterly at me. He earned an early bedtime for being so grumpy in the morning, because, of course, if you're too tired to be co-operative in the morning, then you're obviously not getting enough sleep.
We left for school and he was pissed off most of the way there. He kicked some rocks out of a yard. We usually kick rocks on the way to school, but the rule is that you can only kick rocks already loose on the sidewalk. No kicking rocks out of yards. So, he had to put them back. We spent five minutes with him glaring at me before he finally did it and we were off to school again. Thanks to skipping breakfast, though, he was not late.
While he was glaring on the side walk, I put on my walkman headphones (I take them for listening to while I do my morning walk after he's dropped off), did some stretches and acted totally unconcerned about him just standing there. It worked for me!
We shall see how the afternoon goes...
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