Someone got grounded from "everything" (in practice, turned out to be anything involving a CRT-like screen -- games, tv, movies, watching other people do same) last night because he lied to Mommy about having finished supper. (Say that you can't take the boiled cabbage, you may wind up having to have a few token bites; lie about it, get grounded.) Much with the kaboom. Glad I wasn't at ground zero for that one.

Today, someone wasn't quite on task at school, and had been spacing out instead of working. *sigh* And then when he was worrying over that walking home, he wound up bonking his head because he walked into one of the signs sticking off of the fence at ralmathon's apartment complex. After the tears cleared up, he was still worried over having made bad decisions.

I shared how everybody sometimes makes bad decisions, and what we have to do is decide better next time, and not worry so much about it. And I listed off people who sometimes make bad decisions -- me, Mommy, Marx, Darkside, digitalambience, ralmathon, everybody. And yeah, sometimes grown-ups cry about it too. Like sometimes I used to make bad decisions and be crying and then Darkside would ask me what was wrong, and I would say that I was sorry, and he would ask sorry for what, and I would tell him about the bad decision and I would say "I'm sorry for everything!" and then he would say, "Oh, so you're sorry for being human?" And then I would laugh because he made me feel better. Making bad decisions happens, but we have to try to not make the same bad decision twice.

He decided to balance on the concrete curb in the parking lot of the strip mall with the good resturant for the orange chicken, the one with the big dropoff on one side. He made it. I pointed out that he must have been focusing on walking there, and not on how he made bad decisions today, because if he'd been focusing on the bad decisions, he would have fallen off. He allowed as how that was so.

Later, while we were still walking home, I told him that he was a really smart kid, like his mom, and he was probably doing a better job with first grade than his mom did when she was a kid, because his mom didn't have her mom and dad helping her, because they were always too busy with work and stuff.

The problematic homework that he didn't finish at school had been sort of like a word search, but with math problems. It wasn't totally intuitive, and I had to strongly prompt him so that he used his existing word search skills on it. I got the feeling that he had been spacing on it because he wasn't sure how to do it, and sitting there and looking at it, then sitting there and not looking at it, and then sitting there and looking at something else. And he'd gotten a time-out for not processing his folder stuff on Friday like he'd been supposed to. (He said he'd gotten a time-out and that he didn't want to tell me why; I asked him to please tell me why. So he did.)

The homework didn't come up immediately when we got home, though: the haircut did. It's Arizona, and he's been shaggy, so when he had Fitness Practice club today, he got all sweaty and it felt nasty to him. (That came up because I was instructing him on the Washing of Face with Soap, apropos of the onset of the Adolescent Skin.) He said he wanted to be bald. I said no. We negotiated, and it finally came down to the clippers and me with him in the bathroom, and about half-inch hair. (I'd been thinking longer, but the clippers decided.) I did a little too much scissor-snipping, but it all wound up OK, even though it did pull a little for him, and there was much squirming. He wound up taking a shower immediately afterwards. I pointed out that now was in fact the time for the posturing in the mirror, because there was time and he actually wasn't supposed to be brushing his teeth just then. (And I got to do the "Mmm-hmm, that's nice" for the Whee! I'm Naked! edition of Cool Body Tricks.)

After he was fiiiinally done with his homework and wanted a snack, I was forced to point out that no, no game, he was still grounded. This led to more of the waterworks. I let him know that yes, he could have a granola bar or cheese crackers for a snack, that crying about it made him usually feel worse, and if he was going to insist on crying about it, he could go up to his bed, but he might not bring the cheese crackers with him to bed. Bedwards he went, but came back a few minutes later, non-crying, for the cheese crackers. We had another interesting interlude with him hanging up his backpack and him griping that all anyone ever does all day is yell at him, and me returning, "Well, how does it make you feel if I said 'All the LF does every day is not listen to me'?" He said that it would make him sad; I asked him how he thought it made me feel when he said what he'd just said? Sad. A better way to say it was "Sometimes I feel like all everyone does to me all the time is yell at me," (or something like that) and then we thought of times that day when there had not been yelling.

After that, I turned on some music, and there was righteous boogeying while I fixed supper. For a seven-year-old, he's got some decent moves. Hell, he could hold his own on a dance floor with any given gang of young adults. Air guitar was played; I head-banged some. Supper was had and all was good by the time Mommy got home.