A Blessing in Disguise

Andy is very similar to my brother, David.  He's a complete antagonist, knows how to push everybody's buttons and gets pure entertainment out of pissing people off.  He's smart, and he knows it, extremely confident, and convinced that he is always right and knows everything.  I love them both, of course, but growing up as Dave's little sister who often got the brunt of his obnoxious behavior makes it pretty hard to parent someone just like that.

Last week Andy got grounded.  When he gets grounded, it's always from electronics.  I don't know that this punishment makes him rethink his actions and prevents him from doing the same exact thing in the future, but it's the only thing we know to do that is painful for him.  He was grounded for a week and then got a few days tacked on for bad behavior, so it has been quite awhile since he's gotten to touch the computer (other than to do homework), his DS, his PlayStation or the iPad.  He has gotten to watch tv, because we can't make the girls stop watching tv as well, but he's been forced to watch all their princess and Disney Jr. shows (that don't appeal to him but he secretly likes).  Andy is like me and can pretty much get sucked into anything that's on tv, so it hasn't been too bad in that respect, but I'm sure he would like to be watching something else.

Generally when he gets grounded I moan and groan inside, because him getting punished is almost like me getting punished.  He follows me around and asks me what he can do and he pesters me and he picks on the girls.  A lot.  When Andy is grounded the complaint level from Sarah and Amanda goes way up because he pays more attention to them, which is usually not a good thing.  This time it was a little different.

I'm not going to lie, there definitely were some moments in the last week when the fighting and teasing was a little out of hand, but overall it was pretty enjoyable.  He read several books this week which made us both happy.  One afternoon we played a game of chess and another he and Amanda played Indiana Jones (Amanda was Kentucky Amanda).  They played outside a little bit, when it wasn't snowing, and we even did a little shopping.  All in all, a pretty good week.

Tomorrow he gets his electronics back.  We may not see him for a few days.  Or, he may put the joystick down and do some reading or adventuring or game playing.  I hope it's the latter, there's so much fun to be had.