Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Things Change

First of all, I must report that I got 2 of the 4 must dos done. I have two more to go. I didn’t nap.

I also need to report that my coming down HARD on Salinda has worked wonders. She has confessed some things that she was doing that she felt guilty about and now feels more connected and forgiven. She has completely changed friends and now has a friend who is much more like her than the others she had been spending time with.

One of the things that happened with Salinda when she moved here is that she suddenly had access to all kinds of people of color. She started making friends based on their race, something we have never encouraged our children of any color to do. She determined at that time that everything was “too white” for her and began to pick up all of the attitudes of her friends, declaring that any and everything was “racist.” She started spending time with a few kids who didn’t have parents who supervised kids at all but still let their daughters invite everyone to their homes. (By the way, as a point of interest -- these were not adults of color, even though it sounds by reading through this that they were. Didn’t want to make this about race).

Anyway, to make a long story short, she got caught in a huge lie a couple weeks ago and I grounded her for six weeks. I’ve made a few exceptions to her grounding, but she is expected to be here and to be decent and treat people well. It has forced her to invite people here and she has been surprised to find out that her friends like it here. There is food to eat, space to relax, and supervision.

She’s smiling a lot more and her attitude is 500% better. I guess the Large and in Charge method is proving fairly effective for her. It’s nice to have her back.


I took this picture after Sailnda's new best friend had dinner with us Saturday.

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