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Benefit to homeschooling #84?

Starting the day over.

Captain Earthquake crawled into bed and slept on Hubby’s pillow for a while this morning. Usually that makes for a cheerful start for him, but today it just wasn’t so. First he got into trouble for throwing a ball at a brother, then he got smacked in the face accidentally when he jumped out at said older brother and ran into a door. After that, some kind of verbal altercation ensued and he apparently got kicked. I wasn’t able to track down exactly what happened, but name calling and other vengeful acts were involved.

All this in the space of about ten minutes.

I asked him if this was going to be the whole day and he told me it would be, so I suggested that he crawl back in bed and have a do-over. He wasn’t real thrilled with the idea. It was clear that he was already prepared to just really have an awful day, so I decided to insist. He was even less thrilled.

However, he ran on down and crawled into bed. I finished what I was doing and followed him. He was all huddled under the covers whimpering. The Manager was still in bed, so I hushed the Captain and crawled in quietly with him. I spent some time giving him kisses and it wasn’t long before he was hiding smiles from me. His brother got up to use the bathroom and then came back and got into his bed. I mentioned that it was okay to get up if he wanted to, but I was told “I don’t want to”. Boys after my own heart, those.

Anyways, we spent the time talking and giving hugs and kisses. After a while, a smiling Captain said he was ready to get up and have a happy day. Just now, he told me that he was planning to be happy for the rest of the week, because he’s feeling that good.

Hooray for do-overs.

Earnest Parenting: advice for surviving grumpiness.