That should be a question you ask yourself a lot. With regard to everything, and especially the small things. The reason I started asking myself this, and I don’t recall how long ago, but a long time ago, was because I found myself getting all twisted up over things I couldn’t change. I started joking that if it wasn’t gonna be worth a mention in my obituary, I probably shouldn’t get extremely upset about it.

I think that outlook has allowed me to stay relatively calm in very tense situations. Life can be so demanding at times and having a calm attitude can change the way you see things, so that it doesn’t seem so bad. I have met so many people in my life who have panic attacks, anxiety concerns and stress related medical conditions, while I don’t discount their validity, I feel that so much of this can be helped with mind over matter.

What do you think of that philosophy?

This post is more to convince myself than you, so just humor me ok?

My son has been consistently slacking off this year at school, making sure his grades are barely passing, if we’re lucky enough for that at all. Since March the boy has only been allowed outside sparingly on the rare instance that all his grades are passing or a milestone was accomplished. When we found out he passed the TAKS test was one such occasion.

However, despite the rule in our house being “Failing grades = no outside/freedom/tv/fun” this child is unfazed. I vowed to him over a week ago that if he didn’t pass all of his classes at the end of the year he would be grounded the entire summer and have to do manual labor around the house, such as scrubbing baseboards, cleaning cabinet doors, and other tasks I can think of that are completely unnecessary and totally obnoxious so maybe we won’t repeat this lazy attitude towards school next year. He’s on track to fail one class for the entire year I’m sure of, but Social Studies, Science and Language Arts are all failing grades for the final six weeks of this school year. But as the summer for him draws closer (next week) the more I feel bad about having to take away his summer in this way.

I always keep my promises though and that is something I’ve been very diligent about throughout my son’s life so the poor child is going to find out what life is like for those that don’t try hard enough to succeed. Manual labor, doing a job he does not like or want to do.

It’s so hard to be consistent when you really don’t want to exact the punishment you promised in anger.

Any suggestions?