Today began late. Jeremy was going to mow the lawn and was thoughtful to let me sleep a little past eight a.m. as we'd been up past midnight last night. He walked in the room around 8:15 to say he was going to mow, but I remembered having a piano student coming in fifteen minutes so I got dressed, headed downstairs and got to the last stair as the doorbell rang. He watched the girls during the lesson and then I hung out with them while he mowed the lawn in the awful, awful heat. Thankfully, he wasn't out there longer than an hour and kept only the outside part done.
The girls are all totally stir-crazy. It's too hot out to go anywhere or do anything outside. They want to play different things at the same time and Julia is running everywhere in the house so it made for a tough week overall. Today they all seemed to hit their level of "let me out of here!!!!" at the same time. So we took them to my parents house to go swimming!
The girls had a really great time in the pool. Madi stayed out with my dad and Jeremy while my mom, Riley, Jules and I went in. Riley said her cheeks hurt (sunburned) and Julia had had enough of being held in the pool. When everyone else came inside, Madi sat at the table to play on her iPod by my dad and Jeremy was standing doing something (probably on his iPad :) and the rest of us were in the living room.
Now to share the rest of what happened today, you have to have the back story. Yesterday I let Madi choose when during the day she wanted to do her shower and study time and which order she wanted to do it in. She chose to do it in the afternoon. Totally fine by me. Because Kenzie had spent the night on Thursday night, she only did ten minutes of study time on Thursday so I had told her that she'd do more study time on Friday. I let her know that she'd be doing an hour and she did 40 minutes of it on www.ixl.com - an awesome math site for kids as well as 20 minutes of cursive.
IXL is a great program. Madi goes on and logs in to the site and then chooses the math she wants to work on. She is given different goals to attain. I am able to log in and view what she has worked on, how many minutes she worked on the different sections, what she got right/wrong (specific problems), what kinds of improvement is being made and an overall view of how things are going.
So getting back to the "back story" - Madi talked with Mason in the late morning for about 30 minutes. She asked him to call back in an hour as she'd finish her studying and stuff by then. They exchanged emails so that she could Facetime him and talk that way sometime. She wanted to call him back later in the day. Since she had chosen to take her shower and study in the afternoon and she'd already talked to him, I told her that we'd see whether or not she could call based on her attitude with her studies and how focused she was when she did them. She asked again to call him. I said we'd see, but that we didn't need to call him now. She wanted to check his email address to make sure it was right so I let her do that quickly before we went upstairs. However, I let her know that she would not be able to call him and that she could not Facetime with him right now. She asked "Not even Facetime" and I said "No" and told her that she'd chosen her shower and studying in the afternoon so she needed to do those things first. I took the girls into the playroom while she took her iPod into the shower as she always does so she can listen to music.
However I didn't hear any music and I didn't hear any running water. I was playing with the girls and kept listening for both - didn't hear them. Mind you, I didn't want to tap on the door and double check on her - wanted to give her time to do whatever she was doing and decided to ask her when she got out. 20 minutes went by and finally I heard the water going. Her shower ended and she appeared in the playroom about 20 more minutes later. Over 40 minutes for the entire thing.
I asked "Hey Madi - do you mind me asking what took 20 minutes before the shower?"
She told me she had to go to the bathroom (shared more specific about what she was doing). I said "Ok." And left it at that. Wanting to trust her, I didn't pry. I figured that if it was something else, I'd find out later.
Now back to all of us sitting in the living room today:
We finish swimming and Madi checks her iPod. She notices that she missed a few calls from Poppi and somehow it is brought up that Mason was on the list of people called or people who had called.
I ask "Did Mason call you?"
She says "No, I called him."
So I ask "Well, when did you call him? I don't remember you calling."
She says very softly "I called him in the shower."
The conversation was going on as she is dialing Poppi's number. He answers right after she gives me the information and I was not pleased. It meant that she had not shared that she had disobeyed what I asked her not to do and that when asked what took her so long, she shared going to the bathroom, but left out that she was calling Mason. I immediately had her get off the phone with Poppi so we could talk it out. I was very stern with her and let her know that I was disappointed that she chose to disobey what was asked of her as well as not telling me when asked what she was doing before taking her shower yesterday.
She was very quiet. She did say that she was not able to get through to Mason. But I told her that the point was that she called when told not to and that she was sneaky about going into the bathroom to do it when she thought I wouldn't know. Madison sat at the table for a few minutes. I went into the other room to think things through and Jeremy came in a minute or so later. We talked for a few minutes to decide how to handle it. We decided to let Madi think about it and that we would talk with her in private once we got home tonight. We didn't bring it up and we didn't stay mad at her the rest of the evening. We carried on and all of us played together (hide and seek) and then went to dinner.
When we came home, I put Jules to bed and then the four of us went upstairs and got ready for bed. The girls brushed their teeth and we all read the Bible together. Jeremy and I told Madi that she could draw or read or whatever, but that we'd get Riley to sleep and then both of us would come in to read and talk with her.
Riley kept having to go to the bathroom so I told Jeremy that maybe we should let Riley rest for a little while while we had a talk with Madi. We talked with Riley and she was totally fine. So we went in to have a talk.
I started the conversation by going back over with her what had happened yesterday - the shower, the Facetime/phone conversation about not calling - and then talked with her about why I was upset with her choice to call. Jeremy and I explained that she has many things that she is being trusted with - her bike rides, her room, her iPod, her things, camp, her friends, etc - and that she proves she can be trusted with them or she proves that she can not be trusted with them. We told her that the things she has are blessings and they are incredible things to have, but they are not mandatory and she is lucky to have them. She doesn't have to have them. We talked with her about how there were two things that were very frustrating: 1 - that she chose to disobey and 2 - that she chose to lie and cover it up.
Madi then stated that she didn't lie about calling Mason. She said that she just didn't tell us. Jeremy shared that if she was doing something she wasn't supposed to and left it out of her story on purpose, it's the same as lying about it because she didn't tell the whole truth. So I shared a story with her about something I did when I was about her age that fell into the guidelines of "not telling the truth" and told her how my parents reacted. We had a good talk that had a mix humor and correction. Of course, she's smart and she understood it.
All in all, it was a really great conversation with Madi. We let her know that we loved her and that we want to be able to fully trust her with the things she has. Our choice in disciplining her in this matter and in helping her think through her actions was that she will not be able to use her iPod until tomorrow afternoon after we get home from church. Mind you, we told her that if you or Poppi call, she will definitely be able to talk with you. She just can't play games or listen to music or look for apps on it until tomorrow afternoon. The reason we chose this was because we told her that she is trusted with it and needs to use it wisely and it was the device that she chose to use to call Mason when she was told not to. She understood why we were keeping it - though she didn't like it. We ended the night by reading a few chapters of a book and praying together.
So that was our day!
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