"Mean Mama"

The other day my friend Jamie wrote about being a "stupid mommy". Today I had one of those moments at my house.

We are having a bit of an issue with our oldest child being mean to our youngest child. I know every family deals with this, but it is driving me CRAZY! We have tried several disciplinary tactics, and some have worked for awhile. Then the effectiveness (or my consistency - I'm not sure which) fades and the problems get worse again.

Today I may have found something. I told the boys to come to the table for lunch, and sure enough, I see the hand of the older child reach out and grab the ankle of the younger child as he is walking on the wood floor. Down he goes - again. Granted, he wasn't really hurt, he got back up and headed for his booster seat because he loves to eat more than anything else in the world. But, it made me mad. So I immediately said to the older child, "Since you did that you will have to clean off the entire table after lunch (usually he just carries his plate to the sink - if I remember to ask him). I could tell through all of lunch that my son wasn't completely sure if I was serious about this.

Just in case, he made lunch drag out longer than ever before. When he finally finished, I told him to start bringing me all the dishes off the table. His jaw dropped (as much as a 4 year old's can) and he said, "really, everything?" I knew this was going to be good. "Yes."

As he carried the first plate he pouted a little bit. The second plate came with an emphatic, "I do not like this consequence." And by the third plate, he had a catchy rendition of a newly created song entitled "Mean Mama". Amazingly, through all of this, his whole attitude was not all that rotten; however, he made sure he reminded me again that this was not fun at all.

Score one for mom. I finally found something that caught his attention - and I didn't have to clean off the table for once. I'm thinking this may be my new favorite consequence. I think I'll wait awhile to tell him that when he is older, this will be a mere expectation on his job chart.