Smarter Than The Average Bear

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to Dr Seuss for the modern mother:

I did not yell
      I did not fight;

I did not scream
      I did not bite.

Yesterday may have been my proudest parenting moment yet, which sparked such an inspiring ode to parenting a teenager. Not that I'm prone to biting, but what else rhymes with fight? Kite? Light? Right? Might? MIGHT - I can work with that.

(Take two.)

I did not yell

      I did not fight;

I did not scream

      With all my might.

(That's much better.)

Mr Lemon woke up in a panic yesterday because his truck did not have enough gas to get to work.  I generously offered my car, since I had grand plans to clean and rearrange the house.  He asked if I needed the carseats ... I said, nah, I won't be going anywhere. Splenda will ride the bus as usual.

Problem solved.

Yawn.

Ha.

Apparently her radar for Opportunities To Try And Skip School was on high alert.  She took her sweet forever and didn't out of bed at 6:55am.  I saw that coming a mile away, because I am no longer a rookie, and was not surprised when she moseyed out of her room ready for school at 7:20 with a slight smirk on her face informing me that she "missed" the bus.

I gave her clear instructions to sit her fanny down in the living room, in complete silence.  "Take out a piece of paper and a pencil," I casually said.  "Start writing 'I will not miss the bus,' legibly, and with correct punctuation.  Write until I tell you to stop."

{front and back, two pages. Yes ma'am, she did.}

And then I proceeded to burn up my phone texting those dear friends who may possibly be awake at 7:20am to come and sit with the babies for a few minutes while I took her to school.  Someone was able to be here by 8:30ish, which was great because I really needed that time to cool my jets.  I relieved the stress by shampooing the carpets of the entire second floor.  holla back if you're a stress cleaner :)

Of course I called my mom later to have her pat me on the back and tell me what a good girl I was, and she made a very astute observation about Splenda being very verbal - she's really good at arguing. Negotiating. Verbally manipulating. A born lawyer. Not so much with the comprehension of other people's verbal-ness, though.  Which is probably the root of the problem between us and her, and it's completely out of my control.

The question at hand is, how do I get through to her if we both know she's going to somehow win the argument?  Finding the right consequence to stop or start a behavior is not an easy task.

But maybe I have struck gold here, because she was pretty contrite on the way to school.  I'm not sure if it was the silence or the repetitive writing, but I'll take it.