currency

The other morning I went into the boys’ room to discover that they had pulled all of the clothes out of the closet and thrown them around the room. This is not the first time that this has happened. Sometimes it is the clothes in the closet. Other times it is the diapers from the changing table. Truett has even pulled curtains down. I made them clean it up and then told Truett that he would need to sleep in the baby’s room that night by himself.

When bedtime came, I put Truett down to sleep in Caia’s crib. He laid down and then asked me, “Where is Jebby?” (his name for Jem) I told him that Jem was going to sleep in his own room and Tru fell apart. Crying, screaming, jumping up and down and flailing around. He didn’t want to sleep alone. He was scared. This lasted over an hour and since my husband, Sam, wasn’t home that evening I was left to deal with it on my own. It made for a long, tiring night.

But even though I was exhausted I was also ecstatic. I had finally found his currency.

Truett is that child who doesn’t mind time-outs, who laughs after a spanking and who isn’t phased by missing a tv show. I don’t have many disciplinary methods in my arsenal and none were effective on him. How do you teach a child to behave when he thinks being disciplined is no big deal? My mom kept encouraging me to try different things. That I just needed to find his currency. What was the thing that would feel like a punishment to him?

Last night, Truett was allowed to try again in his own room and this morning when I went in to wake them up they were both still in their beds. Nothing had been pulled out of the closet or the dresser or off of the changing table and the curtains were still attached to the curtain rods.  Cha-ching baby!