This Is Gonna Hurt.

Remember when your parents said "this is gonna hurt me more than it's gonna hurt you" to you all those years ago??  It usually came before a good spanking.  Oh, how the times have changed.

Now, we don't so much say that as much as we think it.

Two grading periods ago our oldest, fifth-grade son brought home a report card that two generations ago would've warranted him going out and picking his own "switch" off the bush.  Instead of a good, old-fashioned whoopin', our son got grounded until his grades were brought up.  GROUNDED!!!

NO video games,
NO sleepovers,
NO friends over,
NO iPod,
NO cell phone,
NO television {unless it was something his little brothers and sister was watching},
NO NOTHING!!!

To him, his life was O V E R!!!

This goofball kid had his world brought to a screeching hault!


We, as his parents, were NOT his favorite people.

We made him do CHORES.  Oh, no!  Not chores!

And when he wanted to play outside he had to play WITH his brothers and sister, NOT his friends.  The TORTURE!!!

A couple of weeks, though, something happened.  After all of those weeks of him surely having thoughts of hanging each of us by our toenails for making his life so miserable {HA!} he came home with an A on a paper.  An A!

And then a couple of days later he brought home a 100% paper.  And a smile on his face!

Two days ago he told me of a report that he needed to do to make certain his Social Studies grade would come up.  He needed to do this paper.  And he was telling me about it.  That's progress, people!

Best news of all??  Yesterday he bounced into the truck, reached in to his backpack and shoved a perfect spelling test in to my face exclaiming that he LOVED Social Studies and the states!  He spelled each of the United States correctly and THAT paper would bring all of his grades to A's, B's and C's!!!

Bestest news of all??  He is PROUD of himself.  HE did that!  {of course, if it weren't for us TORTURING him by taking his ENTIRE life away he probably would've been content just "skating" by in his grades...}

Moral of the story?  That lesson hurt.  Making our son understand that making good grades comes FIRST {before his social life and video games, that is} HURT.  Not being able to send him outside to play and run off the energy that about made me crazy HURT!  It DID hurt me more than it hurt him.  It did!

Tell me what parenting lesson has HURT the most in your household.  I bet we could all share some doozies!