Thursday, November 17, 2011

Passive-aggressive?

So Shannon comes into the office last night at 11PM, carrying a green sign in her hand. "Mom? Can I tape this up on the wall in here tonight in case I forget to give it to you in the morning?" I give a very pointed glimpse at the clock, sigh, and allow her to do such.

"Today let's set a timer to count up and see how long it takes to get done with school. 
Oh, and let's start at 8:00 or 8:30 like we used to. 
PS, how about a shopping spree if we get done by 12:30 or so? 
PPS check one of these: ___yes ___no ___maybe.  
PPPS this is for Thursday"

Let's take this line by line.

Timer? Sure. She's definitely a competitive person and loves to play "beat the clock" games. I'm OK with that line.

So... "8:00 like we used to" ... that's funny. We did that for about 3 days. Remember when I was bragging about a few really good days for attitude and motivation? Yes, those days. Remember how those days stopped? Yeahhhhh. See, it's apparently my fault she's not getting out of bed, I seem to give up too easily, despite going in her room every ten or 15 minutes, despite being growled at (hey, I get it, I'm not a morning person), despite resorting to threats and increasing the volume of my voice after 90 minutes of attempts to get her up. But yes, it's my fault. OK, whatever. ;)  She told me the other day I should try harder by shaking her or letting the dog lick her face. You know, the same dog who's not allowed in her room, much less the top bunkbed where she sleeps, of course I can pick up a wiggly thrashing dog to do that. I told her she's a big girl and able to take responsibility for her own body. She countered with "it's not my fault when I'm out cold." Seriously, I'd love to start school before 10:30.

A shopping spree? Um, OK, totally NO, not going to set a precedent with this one. . I may take her grocery shopping this afternoon and say it counts, hmmmm. Darn it, she does need shoes, and today's the only day until after Thanksgiving with nothing on the calendar. She may win after all.

 Sadly, she's on to my shortcut of "maybe" generally meaning "No, but I'm not willing to be drawn into a debate about why or why not" ..

And I really find it funny that her original plan was to give it to me in the morning, at a time where it would have been too late to get her up to start work at 8AM had I not known that was her goal.

I did get her out of bed on the third attempt at 8:15, the first attempt having been at 7:35. It's now 9AM and she's curled up in her fort/nest under her desk writing in her literature journal. So we're off to a good start anyway. I still dread math today, we had to skip it yesterday, and I think I've gone into what happens when we do that. Will keep you posted.


1 comment:

HellTygr said...

She happily continued to work all morning, getting done with our expected work by 12:40. Yay! No arguments, no attitude. The only thing I'd like to have seen is a willingness to do "extra" math today to catch up from yesterday, we talked about it and she implied she'd be willing, but decided to do the minimum requirement instead. Ah well, not going to push it today. :)