The life and times of John Jennings Mershon, as narrated by his parents...

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

discipline

to discipline thus means to instruct a person or animal to follow a particular code of conduct, or to adhere to a certain "order." consequently, "in the field of child development, discipline refers to methods of modeling character and of teaching self-control and acceptable behavior."

well ... this morning we had some character modeling and self-control teaching to do. hoo boy, did we ever.

first ... jack has proven to be (among his many charming attributes) willful, stubborn, and truly enamored of television. not necessarily in that order. who can say where he gets this from ... well, some can say. and if they say "mommy," don't believe a word of it. well, except maybe the tee-vee part.

but when these three traits combine ... it becomes a "hat-trick" of lunacy chez jack.

and so it was this morning. daddy had the gall to turn off pinky dinky doo because
  1. jack wasn't watching it
  2. it's not particularly age-appropriate
  3. jack had already watched enough television for the morning

well ... this did not sit well with jack who immediately abandoned the little people zoo he was playing with to try to turn the television back on.

and when prevented from doing this? well ... he hit daddy.

and in our house, that's it. time out. no questions asked.

and let's just say jack didn't make it easy on us. screaming and crying, hitting the wall, trying to leave his time out area ... but eventually the timer chimed, time out was over, tissues were proffered, and jack calmed down.

but he didn't want to give daddy a hug after the time out.

when roxana arrived for the day, we told her about his earlier infraction and resulting time out. and jack said, "go time out. no hit. hug daddy. all done."

so, although the physical embrace was refused, the mental one apparently took hold.

and hopefully so will this discipline over our little disciple.

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