A Little Hard Work and A Lesson Learned

This week at school Mylan got four tallies (Strikes against him) for various things. So Larry and I decided to take away his opportunity to go to the Derby Panthers Football game. This was upsetting to him because it is something he and Larry love to do together. Mylan not only has to avoid getting any tallies during the week but he must also achieve his AR goal (Accelerated Reader) each week in order to go to the football games with Larry. Mylan works very hard each week to meet those goals so when he managed to get four tallies in one week Larry and I were a bit shocked. We also wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. Besides not being able to go to the game on Friday he also had to do chores all day today. So after church he did his home work and then set out to do the chores I asked him to do. Since Mylan isn't a difficult child very often, he doesn't gets punishment like this very often. I found it difficult to even give him the punishment. As a parent I started to feel bad...although it is just a part of parenting. I started out with having him pull all the bed sheets off the beds and starting them into the wash (he later put them into the dryer), then I had him clean the bathroom (sink, toilet and tub). He said he actually enjoyed that so I decided that I needed to find something he wouldn't enjoy. So I had him rake the front yard (all the leaves into a pile). He found that to be hard work. Believe me it is, I've done it many times myself. Once he finished with that I gave him a little break. After the break I had a little chat with him to see how well I thought he'd learned his lesson. After our chat I decided that he needed a little more incentive to learn his lesson so I had him do some more raking but in the back yard this time. For those of you who've seen our back yard you know it's a disaster. I ended up having Mylan sweep all the leaves off the deck and then sweep all the leaves from the back porch. I knew this would be hard work because the leaves were wet. While he did this he explained to me the lesson he learned, so I told him that once he was finished and once I had checked it to be sure he'd done the job right that he would then be finished for the day. I think our punishment was successful and Mylan had a lesson learned. Only time will tell.

Here are pics I took of him in the backyard working.

Theses are the leaves on the back porch..wet and heavy. Poor kid.