Intervention of Love and Logic.

There are sometimes in your life that you just want to escape. Many of them when you're a parent result because of well... your children. However as bad as my daughter can get, I have to realize she is, for the most part, a product of what I have taught her. Of course I think that most of us believe we don't teach our kids all these things and they pick much of it up from others.

For instance my daughter, already slightly tired this morning, was extremely mad at me for making her find her snowboots and other school objects, she struck back with, "I'm going to shoot you with a pistol." Since we'd already been at each other's throats for ten minutes now I'm struggling to come up with a way to calm down and yet am taken aback that she knows what a pistol (not a gun, a pistol) is. So I have to ask, "Where did you learn that?" Her reply? "Martin Luther King was shot by a pistol." Suddenly everything makes complete sense, they learned about Martin Luther King in school, more proof that my daughter is listening, at least to somebody.

The morning got a little rougher as I dropped her off at the school bus stop, but hey, she was off to school. And it was then that I finally had time to breathe and I knew that it was time for an intervention. That my life could not go on like this. Since an intervention is the interposition or interference of one state in the affairs of another state (thank you dictionary.com) I know exactly who I want to interfere.... the Love and Logic program.

Back up about four years: I was a dating single parent with a three year old. A child that was most definetly a product of a single mom - she got away with more because I was "too tired" or "too warn out" to deal with it. I admit it. Enter our first intervention: Love and Logic. It was a six or eight week class offered by my child's preschool. Of course I was a little scared that it would be nothing more than people telling me I was a bad parent and I did everything wrong. To my pleasant surprise I couldn't be any further from the truth. It's a class taught through DVD's, sharing with other parents and brainstorming with the information from the DVD's on how best to tackle our problems without resorting to yelling, aggressiveness and extreme anger. It really did make myself a better parent and my child a better child.

However, as all information if not used regularly will get lost in the brain, so did this. She became good enough we barely used it and now four years down the road I'm regretting my lack of thought. But at least I know where to turn and I'm doing something about it before she's the uncontrollable teenager. That is the goal after all... to be able to survive the teenage years and hope she is a moral and responsible individual after them (or at least as much as her mother was).

So may my learning restart so intervetion can happen and may all of you learn on!