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discipline

I found the cure to all bad habits and I can tell you the secret of how to change bad behavior with exercise! Nope, it has nothing to do with exerting yourself and distracting yourself. It has nothing to do with feeling better about yourself or being a better person. It’s much simpler than that and I promise you, it works. I am living proof. You can change bad behavior with exercise and achieve parenting level master status. It is discipline in the best way possible.

We all have bad habits. It’s the truth. I try to be a good example for my daughters. We want our children to grow up to be upstanding citizens of the world. We want them to go out into the world and be so fierce and fearless that they impress everyone they meet. We don’t want them to be jerks. One of my life goals is for people to meet my children throughout their life and be like, “Damn, that is one bada** woman!” At the same time, I want them to be like, “What a lady she is.” That’s my mom getting in my head.

I want my daughters to be the perfect lovechild of Audrey Hepburn, Maya Angelou and Lady Gaga. I want them to be fierce, caring and relentless in their pursuit of good and happiness. That’s what I’m going for but I want them to use their words. I want their words to be the vehicle that can gain them entry into any conversation in the world. I want their brains to be their sexiest body part.

I want them to be giving, loving and embrace life and love and people. I want them to live out loud with no walls or prejudices. I want them to fully appreciate the world they live in without fear or self-doubt. I think I am succeeding, or at least on trajectory with this path, with the exception of one small kink…using their words.

This is where it happens, this is what prompted me to figure out how to change bad behavior with exercise.

Yes, embarrassing as it is, I (the writer) have failed my children in the example of using their words.  You see, I know a lot of words. I know all of the words. I am in love with the words. But sometimes, I am a lazy word user and I resort to profanity. GASP! I know shocking. Well, not really. Not if you’re a long time follower of me. I’ve been trying a lot harder to stop with the lazy words because I don’t want my girls to use all the lazy words. So, I made a decision and it is kind of shocking how well it has worked.

This is how to change bad behavior with exercise.

It’s actually very simple. I implemented a rule a few weeks ago that if you (collective you, as in my family) curse, that is an automatic 50 crunches and if you bicker and yell, that is an automatic 200 pushups and so began the hardest few days of my life. Just kidding, I’ve lived through a lot of hard stuff. I was not going to be broken by crunches and yet, 400 crunches in one day…it was pretty rough but it worked almost immediately. Who knew you could change bad behavior with exercise?

The thing that I’ve learned is that no amount of grounding, taking away of friends, tech or play dates will work to curb my children’s bad behavior. They respond much more astutely to positive reinforcement. I’m not surprised because I am the same way.  I’d prefer to get a reward at the end of hard work than to not get punished. I learned when I was pretty young that I preferred to do what I wanted and suffer the consequences, that’s just how I work and unfortunately, I think I passed that strong will along to my daughters.

However, apparently, none of us love doing crunches. In fact, we despise them. Now, these were not your average run of the mill sit ups. These were those blasted ballet/ floor barre/ physical therapy ones meant to target your lower abdomen. No one works their lower abdomen. It’s not natural and it HURTS!

3 days is how long it took to cure me of my cursing habit. 2 days is all that it took for the girls to never want to use any sort of lazy word ever again. You see apparently, our lazy words are not worth getting off our lazy butts and doing 400 crunches. And the bickering, well, my girls hate push ups even more than crunches. Bickering has been at an all-time low. I can feel my sanity returning. It’s all fun and games until someone has to do exercise.

You see, I’m a die hard, forgiveness over permission gal but I had to be the example and so crunch away I did. I’m still doing 150 every day, just in case I stub my toe or something and need that sweet release plus, I could definitely live without a FUPA. It’s so simple to change bad behavior with exercise. Why did I never think of this before?

I’ve also realized that crunches can probably cure just about any bad habit we have. Think about it. You want to gamble, each bet is 100 crunches. You want to drink, each cocktail is 100 crunches. Want to eat that whole sleeve of Oreos? That will be 50 crunches per cookie, thank you. I’m pretty sure most of us would think twice before doing that again because I don’t know about you but a swear word is not worth 400 crunches and there are no cookies worth 50 crunches. Then again, at the very least, I’d be a heathen with great abs!

Would you have ever thought it was possible to change bad behavior with exercise?

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poop inspection, Gustine Texas, strip search , elementary school children

Apparently, in Gustine, Texas (wherever the hell that may be) a group of elementary school students were “asked” to lower their pants for a semi-strip search and poop inspection of their tiny tushes on Monday.(OK, I just used the word tushes instead of asses but make no mistake, this is not acceptable or meant to be funny.)

School faculty members told two dozen co-ed students , aged 11, to drop their underwear after continually finding feces on the gym floor.

Students were separated into groups of boys and girls and ordered to “pull down their pants” so administrators could “check if they could find anything.” WHAT.THE.F*CK??? This is not the first time a teacher in Texas has stepped over the line in the pursuit of discipline.

As a mother of a 9-year-old, ordering an 11-year-old prepubescent child to drop their pants for “poop” inspection is not only way out of line, it is humiliating and demeaning and who the fuck are these teachers to be looking at kids’ asses anyway? This is a complete invasion of privacy. Can you say mama’s gonna go bat shit crazy?

Gustine Independent School District Superintendent Ken Baugh acknowledged that making kids “drop their pants” goes too far. However, he said the students were only asked to lower their pants a little to determine who the defecating culprit was. As far as I’m concerned low enough to check for feces is low enough to expose their private parts. His reasoning is about as stupid as saying you had sex just a little…just the tip. Wrong is wrong and if this were my child, I’d be filing charges against these idiots.

I completely understand the frustration the faculty was feeling at finding feces on the floor repeatedly but in no world is inspecting a kid’s ( that you haven’t given birth to) ass for poop or anything else ever an acceptable form of discipline. No matter how annoyed and/or pissed off you may be about random defecation hijinks.

These parents have every right to be irate but I’d be doing more than just attending a school board meeting. I’d be taking the entire school to court, demanding an apology to my child and gathering a group of like minded parents to beat the asses of those teachers responsible. The school humiliated these children, illegally strip searched and invaded their privacy on school grounds, with no officers or parents present. They just did whatever the hell they wanted to. Where are the boundaries? Do these teachers think they are untouchable? They could have done anything to these children while their pants were down and no one was around. We entrust our children to them every day and they have breached that trust in an irreconcilable way.

What would you do if your child was told to strip down for a poop inspection?

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Discipline~ using your inside voice outside...your head, behavior, training, self-control, misbehavior,parents, child discipline

Have you ever thought something in your head and in your head it’s really freaking funny? Lacking the discipline to keep it there, you say the words out loud and are met with the ” Is she F to the bomb out of her mind” look? No? Just me, eh?

So, let’s just say that your kids are being complete crack ninjas (of the cutest kind mind you) and you think to yourself, jeez…I’d really like to return these little maniacs to the baby store. But we never say such things out loud because we’d be seen as horrible people who are at the very least social deviants and at the most not fit for parenting at all. DCFS would be called immediately. Instead, we stand there in silence, biting our tongues while our hair falls out in clumps from stress and we develop ulcers…. and we smile. You know that ridiculous ” I have no clue what the hell to do and I can NOT control these ninjas without medicinal help!” look. And as our children misbehave, we simply take a deep breath and pray for time to pass quickly. Believe me, I know adults sometimes need a time out too.Nobody’s perfect, right?

In reality, what choices do we have? In a calm and quiet voice, bend to their eye level and try to reason with children beneath the age of reason? Have you seen anyone ever actually do this? I have and while it is perfectly PC and I wish I could be more like that Mama, it seldom works and is usually met with a resounding “NO!” which really translates in baby speak as a forceful “F*ck YOU!”

Perhaps, you could send them on their way to a nice long (age appropriate= 1 minute per year of life) “time out”. Excuse me but if the time out is under 2 minutes, foggedaboutit. It’s simply not going to work. If your child is too young to walk, time out won’t work. Aside from the fact they will just crawl away, the child will flee out of sheer incomprehension. I tried this and ended up chasing a giggling toddler around the room like Benny Hill. She thought it was a game…. catch the baby. I am the one who ended up in tears and apologizing.

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Discipline~ using your inside voice outside...your head, behavior, training, self-control, misbehavior,parents, child discipline

Image More4Kids

If the child is too old for time out, they sit there ignoring you and waiting out the time out. They are content with this time to gather their thoughts and plan their bedtime revolt.

You can’t spank your child no more than you can kick your dog. You just can’t so just let that idea slip right out of your head.

Sure, you have your thoughts of effective discipline but never actually do them and you NEVER speak of them. These are the dreams of medieval discipline that we fantasize about when 7 children under the age of 5 are screaming and ignoring while we curl up in a corner crying in the fetal position.The key is NOT to speak of them in polite society.

Discipline~ Using Your inside Voice Outside…your head

“Come here you little punk, I bet a good dose of water-boarding will make you pick up those damn Polly pockets and Legos!”

“Oh yeah, NO to me? NO to you! NO dinner! No toys! No clothes! No play dates! I’m taking it all away!!!”

“You hate me? Well, I don’t like you either!”

“Why? Why? Because, I said so that’s why. Now stop asking me so many flipping questions!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!”

“Please, for the love of GOD, GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!!!!!!!”

Then there is that one comment that you think might be acceptable to say out loud, funny even in the right context. When my hairdresser asked why I would get my girls names tattooed on my wrists:

“Well, I figure since they are the ones who make me want to slit my wrists perhaps if I see their sweet names there on my wrists it could give me something to live for. Or get a sharper razor.”

I was joking OBVIOUSLY but her face told me that that was one of those statements that most definitely should have stayed INSIDE MY HEAD!

Discipline~ Using Your inside Voice Outside…your head

So, now I have two problems, she thinks I’m an asshole and I have to find a new hairdresser. I should have exercised some discipline of my own filter.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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