Atatood

Who's to say how my youngest child will turn out. Right now he's fifteen months old and has more energy in his smallest toe than I have in my whole entire body on a good day. He's a nut case and I'm, quite frankly, a little concerned about what all that energy might do some day. Burn the house down by accident? Maybe.

But, the other two are a little more settled in their ways. And Matthew has a tendency to be quick tempered. Over ridiculous things. This is almost always a result of being over tired. At eight years old, the child still occasionally needs a nap. Garrett hasn't needed a nap since he was two years old so it is true that you cannot parent any two children the same way. 

On Thursday, I asked Matthew to go read. This is a school requirement and I had already recorded his minutes in his daily planner. I will spare you the details but suffice it to say that an insane amount of football coupled with being back in school caught up to my kid. He FLIPPED his lid. The meltdown was immediate and...a little crazy. 

I fully implemented the "you just wait until your father gets home" tactic. In the end, he lost screen time until he could earn enough points to get it back. He was given a list of ways to earn points. Most of them involved doing chores. One of them was writing me an apology note. He wasn't given any help with spelling or content. He brought me a note, folded and taped into a third grade version of origami. 

Dear mom, Sorry for my bad atatood. Next time i won't get mad. I will not flail my arms and huff and puff and blow up. I will never act like this again.

First off, I am contemplating only spelling attitude this new way. From now until forever. For the duration of my life. Second, I nearly died laughing about the huff and puff part. Once I recovered from that, I moved on to the little bit about how he would never act like that again. Idle threats, friends. He certainly will act like that again. And when he does, if you think I don't fully intend to present him with this note, you'd be dead wrong.

I love that kid. I do not love his quick temper so much but if he can just learn to harness his atatood, that kid is going places.