Girls...

 Please visit my friend, Patty, at Finding Serendipity and pass along the link to your friends who have girls...she has committed to 31 days of helping others find ways of nurturing the self esteem of a child.

Today's story about her mother's way of discipline brings back memories of my son when he was five years old. A dear friend of mine had allowed us to keep her son overnight while she worked. They boys decided they would make a trampoline of the living room sofa, and I had asked them more than once to stop (apparently they couldn't hear me over all the joyous laughter). Eventually, I became quite irritated and put them both in a corner for 5 minutes. I have never seen such HUGE crocodile tears or heard such sobbing from a five year old boy! I seriously broke his heart. And he broke mine that night, because I had to keep my promise that it would be a full five minutes. I don't think, as a five year old, that he had any concept of 5 minutes; might as well have told him 5 days. He thought he was going to have to stare at that corner until his mother came back the next day. My son, on the other hand, was used to the five minute time out and wasn't too worried about it because he remembered from recent events that it wasn't the end of the world.

All I can say is, it worked! They spent the next 15 years spending the night with each other, and he still calls me his second mom (and begs me not to put him in time out, LOL).