Wednesday, August 17, 2011

A Tale of Education and Lemon Juice

Since Ricki is home on vacation, I have a better opportunity to give her some consistent, intensive behavioral guidance. In simpler language, it means that I have an easier opportunity to apply “consequences” for bad behavior. [She is home the whole day, and she needs favors from me to keep herself truly occupied. That means that if she wants special activities (which stem off boredom), she needs to behave.]
So I decided that it is time for me to start dealing in a much stricter manner with her “chutzpah”. Whenever she doesn’t get her way, she will usually either call me “cheeky”, or make aggressive motions. Up till now I have largely ignored such behavior, realizing that many teens mouth off to their parents. However, she has lately been doing this so consistently that this pattern of behavior will surely hurt her later on in life if not curbed. She will need to know that people in authority can yes expect her to listen to them (in general), and will not tolerate her calling them names.
So yesterday morning, after Ricki told me to “shut up”, I waited patiently. I waited until I went out to run a few errands, an activity Ricki assumed that she would be joining me in. (As with most women, Ricki LOVES shopping….) But when I left, I went on my own, explaining to her that I was not taking her because she told me to “shut up”. She accepted that fairly well.
Later in the day, however, she was truly exasperated when I refused to make her a (diet) frozen yogurt due to her having consumed (and knowing that I did not allow) THREE soy burgers (and G-d knows how many slices of bread with them….). A few minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with two bottles of prepared iced drinks to take on our visit that afternoon to a lung specialist. (We needed to check if she has underlying lung damage after her pneumonia..*) One had diet juice, for me, the other (and here she crowed out in a strong “only-I-am-getting-this” tone) Is LEMON drink for me.
Well, we do have lemon diet syrup, but since she obviously felt that it was something “special”, I suspected highly that she had prepared for herself a bottle of unsweetened lemon juice from the new unopened bottle on the table.
“Ricki, is that “lemon-mint?” (the diet syrup)
“It’s ‘preserved lemon’,” she answered, “for ME!”
I explained that it has no sugar, and is bitter, and now that it is open, needs to go into the fridge. Each bit of information was registered, and she answered to each sentence “I KKNNOOWW!!”, while she simultaneously rushed to add sugar to her drink…..
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that for a split second I considered letting her take her special “Lemon drink” as it was, but gee, even I’m not THAT mean…..

*( the doctor’s first impression is her lungs are OK. We are going to do a sleep study to try and determine why she sits when sleeping as of late.)

1 comment:

Batya said...

G-d willing all's well. You're really on the ball.