Great Day, Hard Night (pt. Two)

You may think I'm crazy if you read the last post (I just published it this morning).  The internet was being goofy--go figure, I know--and I couldn't post the first part of Great Day, Hard Night, and the website wouldn't let me continue typing either.  That's the first part just ends with misspelled words.

So, to pick up where I left off  . . .

 . . . Wolton caught me on my way upstairs after the "getting ready for bed" chaos, and he begged me to bring the matchbox cars down.  I said "No." He asked again.  I said "No" again with every excuse running through my mind: I'm tired, the noise will kill me, the kids will get wound up.  But, he looked at me with adorable face of his, and I thought "Why not?  Will it kill me to give 30 minutes of my time?"  I said, "Yes."  Pretty soon 15 kids were playing with the cars on the floor.  Was it loud?  Yes.  Was there crying and screaming? Was it worth it?  Yes.  It really was so easy to spend 30 minutes supervising the chaos and managing who had how many cars and consoling the crying kids who had their car taken from them.

Then came time to go to say prayers and put the cars away.  That went okay.  But then I had to tell the girls to go out back and sing their prayers.  Mimose wouldn't go.  No matter what Alix and I said, she refused to move.  Even when I told her that if she didn't move I would discipline her, she didn't move (she thought I was joking, not being jerky).  I had to follow through on what I said, so I pointed upstairs and said, "Mete sou jenou." --"On your knees."  She looked at me in shock, and suddenly the kids behaved.  All except Michael--he had been naughty quite a bit.  So, both Michael and Mimose went upstairs to kneel.

I have mixed feelings about having the kids kneel as punishment only because they are often left for hours to kneel.  Now, they don't kneel that whole time because the person punishing them leaves, does other things, and the kids end up talking and just sitting.  I think, though, that 10 minutes of real kneeling would be more of a punishment than hours of just sitting and still being involved in what's going on.  I put on my "tough face" and made the kids kneel on the steps facing Gertrude's office (I didn't want them to be able to watch T.V.).  I told them 10 minutes and that every time they turned around I would add 1 minute.  I then plopped myself down next to them (discipling kids is a pain because you really end up discipling yourself!  Yuck.).  Mimose understood, served her 10 minutes, and went on her way, albeit a bit slowly at first due to still knees.  Michael, however, still thought it was a joke.  He kept turning around and smiling or making faces to see what I would do.  Thirty minutes later he finally was able to go downstairs!

As an aunt, I've never really had to discipline my nieces and nephew, and even as a teacher when I give kids a detention it's not bad because I would be there anyway and I am able to get work done.  This is the first time I was inconvenienced by disciplining children.  I wanted to be downstairs and be a part of the prayers because it was my last night there.  I wanted to read my book, but if I was doing that I couldn't keep on eye on the kids to make sure they weren't watching T.V.  And, sitting on a hard stairs for 30 minutes is the most comfortable.

It's not the way I wanted to spend my last night, but it needed to be done.  I don't know that the kids learned much (other than I will now discipline them and follow through on what I say), but I know I learned some stuff.  Maybe that was the whole point--for me to learn.