Love hurts

With two little boys at home, it's fairly safe to assume we're a rough-and-tumble kinda family. There isn't a lot of mincing of words; generally speaking, we're straightforward in approach and WYSIWYG in manner and action. That was never more clear to me than this afternoon.

Boy #1 and I were talking about homework. Meanwhile, Boy #2 was trying -- unsuccessfully -- to get Boy #1 to pay him some attention. After several attempts, seeing that his brother was sitting low to the floor, Boy #2 did what seemed obvious and effective: He stomped on his brother's foot. Hard. He was successful in gaining Boy #1's attention, but didn't get quite what he wanted.

I need to back up a bit and explain that, in our family, when you wrong someone, you need to apologize to that person for the specific incident you caused. It might be after medical treatment has been sought and/or discipline has been meted out, but the apology needs to take place.

So. . .after Boy #1 was soothed and Boy #2 was made to realize his error, he went to apologize. It went something like this:

Boy #2: "Brother, I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
Boy #1: "Sorry for what?" (Remember, we seek a specific apology for specific actions.)
Boy #2: "For what I did before."
Boy #1: "What did you do?"
Boy #2: Promptly stomps on his brother's foot again.

Did I mention that Boy #2 is quite literal? Also that, unless he's got something he really wants to say, he'd prefer to use actions or mime to get his point across? Well, there you go.

Just another example of tough love here in The House.

- ma'am