Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Today has started out different. For one, I took my sertraline yesterday and today, so I'm already feeling more in control of my emotions. We got the kids fed and ignored the mess afterward. Tyler and I had a heart to heart about discipline and decided that our kids just have to be spanked. I've tried all this year to teach my kids to be obedient through natural consequences and conversation, but it hasn't worked. It's only created chaos and disrespect. I feel so defeated and like a failure as a mother. 

So, as of today, any time they ignore me after I ask them politely to do something, they get one spank. I hate it, but I stay calm so that I can show them it's merely a consequence of disobedience. I hope this works. Charlie has ODD, and his first appointment with a counselor is this Thursday. I really hope that the counselor can give Charlie and me some effective tools to use, because I'm at my wits end. The spanks worked for Alex very quickly. Charlie, on the other hand, it didn't work on very long. It worked during math, science, language arts, and Spanish along with me offering to type the answers for me if he said them out loud first. With handwriting, though, nothing worked. He just hates it so much, I finally had to send him to his room for a while so I could focus on Alex and Cedric.