I asked the kids to make sure they had all the stuff they have to turn in for this grading period done before they went to Texas. I was assured that they had it all. FMC was lying through their teeth. They had half of it.

So we’ve had a stressful week. They spent about 10 hours not really making progress on an assignment yesterday as they cried and told me how unfair and mean I am. They can do one of these assignments in 1-2 hours if they choose. They kept restarting the first two sentences and crying. Why? I don’t know.

So when we were getting close to dinner and they still weren’t halfway through the penultimate assignment and they were still derailing to tell me how awful I am… I snapped. I started screaming.

It is not my fault you are in this position. You are in this position because you chose to lie about being done a week ago. So since you lied to me and are proceeding to make my life miserable because of your lie… you are grounded for a week. No screen and no sugar.

And tomorrow morning you get to wake up and finish your work. If you don’t finish by the time your ES shows up… you are grounded for two weeks and that includes Christmas.

I’m not fucking around.

Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. And if you do, at least have the courtesy to not turn around and yell at me that it is unfair that you have consequences for lying. That’s not ok.

I’m not going to play this bullshit game.

So I feel meeeeeeeeeeeeeeean and like I need to be this mean. It would have been better if I could have just enforced this without screaming. But holy shit the whining and yelling at me yesterday was more than I could handle.

So in the past hour kiddo has finished the first assignment and is almost done with the second assignment. Apparently they woke up with a fire under their butt. They are no longer whining and stalling they are just concentrating and writing.

They don’t want to be grounded for Christmas. Oh good. They are still not eating cookies at the cookie exchange party. I’m a hard ass.

I tell my kids frequently that home schooling is a privilege. If you want to home school you have to be responsible for your education. I am not going to breathe down your neck and force you to comply with doing work. Do it or you can go to school and be micromanaged by a professional teacher who is BEING PAID to boss you around like that. I’m not being paid to micromanage you. I’m here to help you if you want to do the work. I’m not ok with dragging and forcing you through an education. I will not do it. Work or go to school.

Every so often we need a reminder that I’m serious. I’m not going to do this harsh babysitting/punishment thing constantly. I’ve only had to yell at my kids on two or three days this year about school and I’m unhappy about it being that much?

If I were better I wouldn’t have yelled those days. But I hit my limit sometimes.

Sigh.

EC had her shit together this time. I was impressed. She didn’t even need reminders. FMC is only seven and this is their very first time in their life being held to school standards like this on a regular basis. The fact that I’ve had three days of fuss in their first academic school year…

I need to be a little more patient. They have mostly done pretty well. And I didn’t ask EC to do this shit at this age. It actually makes sense that FMC is testing the boundaries to see what happens. What they are discovering is that I’m kind of a nasty bitch if you lie to me. I can tolerate all kinds of failures and mistakes without raising an eyebrow. I don’t expect perfection. But don’t lie to me.

And now kiddo is done. Sigh.

We’ve talked about how next time they won’t lie and say they are done because it didn’t make the work easier it made it a lot harder. And they are really sad about being grounded. So next time… they will be honest about not being done yet. I asked them if this work would have been hard if they had started a week ago with many days before the ES came. They shook their head and said it would have been really easy. They even spontaneously added, “I wouldn’t have cried at all.”

Yup.

That’s what we are shooting for. The not crying. The not stressing. The not feeling terrible about deadlines. We had time.

Lying makes everything worse. Don’t lie.

And now they are doing their 15 minutes of online reading program and they are done with academics for the day by 7am. That’s going to be a better day for them….