Mornings in our house have been a little rough lately. We’re two weeks out and my kids are still on their Christmas vacation schedule I guess.

This morning, The Hubs was up and out at 6 am so I was flying solo getting the kids ready to take Scorch to school.  He woke up at 6:10, so I let him watch a TV show to ease into things (and to give me a chance to get showered).  When the TV show was over, Scorch came to get me and the first words out of his mouth was “Can I watch a video?”  He loves to watch dinosaur documentaries on my computer whenever he can.

My answer was the same as it always is.  If he can eat, get dressed, brush his teeth & hair and get his boots on quickly enough then he can watch a video.  If he can’t, too bad so sad.  Scorch immediately bursts into tears.

“That’s not fair, you always let me watch one!” Ummm…no, I don’t, but thanks for trying.

He finally gets done eating and it’s time to get dressed.  “But I don’t want to get dressed right now!”  I tell him fine, but if he doesn’t want to get dressed he won’t have time to watch a video.  He chooses to play for 5 minutes instead of getting dressed.

Finally, we get him dressed, teeth brushed & hair combed.  Beaners is more or less presentable, so we put on our jackets and gather up our stuff. We have to leave a little bit early today because the roads are iffy so I’m trying to hustle them along.

“Wait- I didn’t get to watch a video yet!” Sorry dude- you didn’t get ready in time. You choose to play instead of getting dressed when you were supposed to and you ran out of time.

You would have thought I shot his dog.  The sobs. The tears. The runny nose.  Then…the threats.  “If you don’t let me watch a video right now, I’m never going to stop crying!” Buddy, I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Keep crying all you want as long we are out the door in 2 minutes.

At this point, Scorch yells at me “Put on a video right this second!!” You could see the look in his eye the minute he said it- he knew he had gone too far.  Thankfully all I had to do was give him the stink eye and he got his sobbing, snotty faced body outside to the car.  I told him I was sorry he couldn’t watch a video and that maybe tomorrow he could make better decisions. Then we had a quick talk about how his behavior- the crying, the threats, the yelling- was completely unacceptable.  Because his behavior was so unacceptable, there would be no videos on the computer the whole rest of the day.  He’s not at all happy but after a minute or two, he pulls himself together.

Wonderful- finally, blessed silence.

Then Scorch pipes up from the backseat of the car, “Since you didn’t let us watch a video, can we watch a movie in the car?”

Head thunk.