"Tough Love" Lessons...

We have been having our parenting skills throughly tested over the past week or so, and have since had to come down rather hard on Gabriel with a punsihment that will be lasting a week. It all started last Wednesday when he was asked to ride along with his Poppy to go to Frederick and pick up chickens and he downright refused to go when he had no choice HE WAS GOING, so after I threatened many times that I would spank his butt, he FINALLY got it and STILL refused to go and thus he was put into the truck and sent on his way. I called Tony who was on the truck in DC at the time and told him the entire story and how HORRIBLE I felt that he would NOT only not listen to me but how he must have made his Poppy feel to not want to go with him.

So when Tony got home he had a long talk with Gabe and eventually had him call his Poppy to apologize. We took TV and video games away and warned him that if it happened again life as he knew it would become miserable...WELL come Thursday afternoon Gabe took it upon himself to not only disobey us by playing video games BUT he also invited 2 of his friends over to the house to play and no adults were around. We came home to find 3 boys running thru the house and Gabe "red handed" playing video games...they were playing in the rock pile up by the calf barns while we were working nearby and then they just all disappeared...when we asked Gabe why he disobeyed us his excuse was that he just forgot.

Needless to say after that happened, we were NOT happy at all with Gabe and decided that since taking priviledges away and spanking did not seem to be working that he would do a weeks worth of manual labor to try to get thru. So Friday he scrubbed the front and side porches of the creamery and Saturday he got up with Tony and I and went to farmers market and worked alongside us and we have jobs for him to do thru Thursday of this week. Today we gave him the day off and we did have a picnic at Jim and Sue's this afternoon and the kids got to swim with their cousins and have a good time together. We just hope and pray that we get thru...