Old Story Tapes

Yesterday Buster woke up ornery.

Wouldn't wash his hands,
wouldn't brush his teeth,
wouldn't wash his face,
wouldn't speak clearly,
wouldn't be respectful....

His sister was down in her room
unwilling to make her bed,
unwilling to get dressed,
unwilling to get any kind of speed going....

So, after praying with them,
talking to them,
going over the Bible verses
and encouraging them to do right
with little results

I decided to stop prodding , told the big girls to make sure they didn't leave their rooms and I hopped in the car and went to the licensing department a couple miles down the road and picked up the registration for the suburban.

I was back in 15 minutes, but it was enough to turn Missy around. She didn't want to miss out on any other "outing" that just might happen.

But alas for Buster. He dug in deeper.
I'm begging the Lord for more patience for this child. He definitely pushes my buttons. I had to set him on a chair and just walk away. He would discuss Bible verses with me. He loves to talk. He was interested in what I had to say about planting good seeds and had some of his own thoughts to add to it, but head knowledge doesn't magically turn into heart responses and he refused to obey. I thought maybe if I put his memory verses on a cassette he could learn them faster and I went in search of an old tape.... what I found was a treasure trove of OLD cassettes the girls had when they were little. Your Story Hour Bible stories, Gospel moments, Janice Attic, Children of the King, etc.. I popped one in Buster's player and "time out" lost it's sting as the little guy got lost in a story of Jesus and the Storm. I wasn't sure he would listen to a story tape, but he's listened to this one 3 times over and wants to tell everybody about it. He even went looking for the Bible story books and found the pictures to match the story. I'm only going to give him one tape at a time. He can learn the stories well before he gets the next one.

His attitude brightened around lunch time, but when I asked him to do a little chore he fell to pieces and was back in time out. A couple hours later he was "cured" and went sledding with Bri.

Missy on the other hand was great most of the day... and then turned nasty around 4:30 pm and ended up in bed and slept until 7 when I woke her up.

Discipline

"The object of discipline
is the training of the child for self-government.
He should be taught
self-reliance and self-control."

Education page 287

Checking In

Most everyone around here is starting school today, except us. I'm not ready and I'm giving myself an extra two weeks to get organized. I'm thinking, praying and planning. For the twins getting more than a couple days of speech a week is my goal. We're working with the department at our local hospital where Steve works to get them scheduled for individual therapy. The school can do their combined classes if they want, but I know they need individual attention since their speech issues are so different. Buster is understandable. His speech problems are in the language structure and stuttering and slow recall. For poor Missy it's all about articulation. We went hiking the other day and Missy hiked a long way with my dad and she talked NON-STOP and he could not make out more than half of it.

The twins are doing well. They are going with the flow. We still have cousins here so there's lots of activity going on. Buster has only wet his pants 2 times in the last week. I'm happy with that.
The habit of using the toilet is forming. :-)

I've kind of noticed that Missy is not such a control freak anymore. She isn't telling me how things have to be done or what she wants so much. She's been pretty laid back lately and it's nice. She's also learning that ignoring me, shrugging her shoulders or saying "I donno" doesn't work so well when I'm asking her a question and so she's making an effort to use words and answer. Her inclination to pretend she doesn't know is not necessarily the easy way out anymore.

Well, there's work to do, so off I go....