Bitch Mode

 

So. When it comes to punishing my child, I'm really all or nothing. Either I'm ON her for EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING… or I could care less.

This is probably where my problem comes from with Jordan, as I'm not consistent in ANY WAY.

Obviously this is very frustrating. I'm sure to all of you, Jordan, Pete, my friends, the casual observer…

Well, occasionally I decide that I am going to CHANGE that and be more consistent and have a daughter who LISTENS and doesn’t LIE etc etc.

So. Every few months I enter, what I’ve termed ‘BITCH MODE’.

I learned about Bitch Mode from my cousin, Jena. She has three little boys, all under the age of 7, who are VERY well behaved. Most of the time. Sometimes they are little assholes. Pretty sure they were about to tie me up this one time… anyway, I digress, the point is they listen to HER. Which is more than J does. And every time I see her I am SHOCKED and Jealous as FUCK because I’ve only got ONE and I can’t get her to behave, HOW DO YOU DO IT? And then she told me the ancient secret of Bitch Mode.

What is Bitch Mode, you ask? Bitch Mode is when Jordan has gone a month or so of being a fucking MONSTER, and to nip that shit in the butt, I spend about a month where I come down on her for EVERY SINGLE LITTLE TINY THING.

She gets a snack without asking? No snack for two days.

She talks back to me with sass? Slap that mouth!

I catch her playing with her doll when I told her to clean her room? Throws doll away.

She lied to me? Washes mouth out with soap.

Has a fit because she ‘’doesn’t like’’ what I made for dinner? Send her to bed without ANY dinner.

She has a fit, argues, etc… and she gets spanked.

There's been quite a bit of yelling...

 

So far this week she’s gotten three spankings, sent to her room twice, hands slapped, time outs, lectures…

I try to avoid the physical punishments as much as I possibly can, but damn, there comes a point when timeouts don’t phase her. I can yell until I’m blue in the face (she will attest to that) and it just doesn’t have any sort of effect on her. She keeps up the horrible monster ‘tude. And then I’m ready to EXPLODE.

And frankly, I’m done with it. I don’t NEED to be embarrassed to take her places. I don’t want to have to worry that she’s going to argue with me, or be naughty, or decide to have NO manners at the worst possible moment. Not gunna do it anymore. I don’t want her to go to a friends house and have to worry about her lying or being mean or having a fit about food…

And I want her to do WHAT I TELL HER TO DO WHEN I TELL HER TO DO IT.

Get your pants on means “GET YOUR FUCKING PANTS ON”, not “sit on the floor of your room half naked and play with your My Little Ponies!”

 

There are two phases to Bitch Mode. Phase one, was described above. Phase two is similar to good cop, bad cop.

WHENEVER she does ANYTHING right during bitch mode I go above and beyond to praise her.

She shut the door, instead of standing there with it open for 20 minutes? GOOD JOB JORDAN!

She said thank you for something? I make sure to point out how POLITE she is being.

She tells the truth about something, I make sure to not go bizerk and tell her how proud I am that she told the truth, and calmly explain what the issue is, and how we are going to resolve it.

Case in point.

Last night Pete found LP on the couch next to, what appeared to be, pee.

He spanked LP and threw him outside.

A short time later, we went inside to sit down to dinner, and I found a wet spot on the couch. Until this point I had been ignorant of the fact that LP peed on the COUCH. I just thought he had peed. Well, while Pete and I were discussing this, Jordan piped up with “mommy, that’s not what happened.” Well, I feel bad, but I kind of ignored her for a minute. Until…

“MOMMY. LP didn’t pee on the couch! I know what happened!”

“What happened?’

“I spilled my juice box…”

I was in SHOCK. She told the truth about something that she knew was going to get her in trouble!

I very calmly explained how she should have told me right away, but needed to be more careful with her juice, and if it was an accident then no, I wasn’t mad. Then we explained to her WHY its important for her to tell us the truth right away, in this case, because LP got in trouble and it wasn’t even his fault.

 

There have been a few circumstances like this over the last week.

I’m definitely seeing results.