Last night, at bedtime, Max was in the bathroom "brushing his teeth" when I came down the hall for a whole different purpose, but ended up standing there, just by the open bathroom door, listening to him not brushing his teeth.
I came around the door and said to him, "Whacha doing, Max?"
"Brushing my teeth!"
"Hmm....seems like not, as I didn't hear any brushing."
"Do you have to hear me brush all the time?!?!?!"
"Well, no, but when I'm standing about 3 feet away and all is quiet, then, yes, I should be able to hear you brush. Go ahead and try again."
"No!" very defiant, digging in for a fight.
"Okay, then," I steered him off to bed said, "Good night. See you in the morning," and left without reading.
The next "incident" was at 6:45, 15 minutes before I have to get up. The family rule is that, if you have to go to the bathroom while others are sleeping, then you don't flush if you've only peed.
A couple of weekends ago, Davan woke up early in the morning and did more than pee. Max, hearing this, got up and "didn't pee" himself. I've been treated to 6:30 or 6:45 flushing every morning since then that he hasn't been sleeping when I go in to get him up. This was one of those mornings. He, most of the time, is actually peeing. Ever since the time that I pointed out that he hadn't even been in the bathroom long enough to pee, though, he does make sure to spend time in there before he flushes.
Any-who. I go to get him up and march him into the kitchen (rather then carrying him to the couch for a finger rhyme and story) and tell him to brush his teeth. He has some talk about that, but he does it. Then I explained that, as he hadn't brushed his teeth the night before when I told him to, he just spent reading time this morning doing it. I plan on having him brush his teeth after school today, for practice in doing it when told, as well.
He wasn't thrilled about that. Then he was getting dressed and I told him that he didn't have permission to flush the toilet when other people were sleeping anymore.
"Why?" he whines at me.
"Think about it, Max," I told him. Without sarcasm, I might add.
"I'm not flushing to wake people up!!!!"
No comment from me. We move one with our morning and I even go over and give him a nice long hug, saying, "Good morning, Max."
Then I discovered he hadn't unpacked his backpack from yesterday. And his lunch was still in there. Not just the bag, but the whole lunch. He just said, "I didn't eat it."
"So, what did you do at lunch time?"
"I can't say."
Apparently he was doing top secret spy stuff. I got us out the door before bringing it up again. As we're walking to school, I said, "So, what happened at lunch time yesterday?"
He still didn't want to say. He tried to get me to commit to what would happen if he didn't tell me, but I wouldn't say. His imagination is worse. He finally fessed up that he'd gotten a hot lunch. I was less than pleased, as he is well aware that he is to eat the packed lunch. The nutrition in the hot lunches is...well, awful. Plus, as we went over during the stealing breakfast phase, it's stealing to make up a number. Turns out, he gave his name and was cleared to eat.
Apparently, when he was paying back the breakfasts, instead of figuring out what number he'd used and paying that back, they'd put it in under his name. So, he had just enough in there for a hot lunch. I told him he still had to pay it back and he had to pay me for the food he'd wasted, as well, the same amount.
He was, of course, a shit about it all - pulling away from me, glaring, etc. I said to him (and pay attention because this is where I acted like the little kid), "Max, that's a smart way to treat the person who is supposed to bring treats for your whole class at 1:45. We'll see if that still happens. Good luck," and walked away.
I'm guessing he stressed about that all day - right up until I showed up. Real mature thing to do on my part.
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