I haven’t even been tempted to yell at the kids today, but it’s kind of a hollow victory: I hardly saw them. They spent the morning at Grandpa’s, and then I was busy helping with the autism awareness walk, and then Justin went to a hockey game, so there weren’t many opportunities to clash. Who said this parenting thing was tough? Pshaw.

I’ve been mulling over suggestions from others on ways to deal with the kids that involve neither yelling nor repeating myself a dozen times. If they won’t pick up their Pokemon cards, for example, I could threaten to pick them up myself and keep them for the rest of the day. That’s certainly an idea, though I can envision lots more yelling from their end. But it might be short-term pain for long-term gain.

For Justin in particular, I need to develop a more visual way to get his attention. When he gets going on his rants (which these days mostly stem from his aversion to being told what to do), talking to him is useless: he can’t process my words even if he could hear them, which he likely can’t. He learns best through his eyes. Writing things out for him is a good technique, but not always practical. What we really need is some sort of hand signal to let him know it’s time to calm down. Hmm…