Hmmm…I feel like stirringthe embers of debate. Let’s talk about the lift on California’s ban on gay marriage. How will this affect the rest of the country? Do you think it will start a wave of ban lifts? For those of you who live in the Bible belt, what is the general consensus there?

How will this affect parenting and the attitude towards children of same sex marriages, in California? Even with the desegregation of the US, it took a long time for attitudes to change.Some have yet toditch their racist views. Will same sex marriage follow suit? How long do you think it will take for the whole United States to acknowledge same sex unions?

Let’s discuss!

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For any Supernanny fans, Jo is on her website RIGHT NOW…chatting with everyone. It will only last 30 more minutes, so hurry on over there! www.jofrost.com

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When a child commits a misdemeanor in your home, do you resort to using the same punishment every time, or do you tailor it to fit the crime? Do you skip the “punishment” in favor of a lecture lesson?

My son made the mistake of writing on the wall, yesterday. It was pretty obvious who did it. Yet, the guilty party was reluctant to admit his guilt. After he confessed, his dad and I convened in the bedroom to choose the appropriate sentence. In this case, it was the chore of washing walls and a talk about theimportance of truth.We try to stop and consider our options and the nature of the crime, before selecting an appropriate corrective action. It doesn’t always happen that way, of course, but we do try. I think after ten minutes and two very achy arms, my son had learned his lesson. Only time will tell, but I don’t think he will soon forget how boring it was to scrub walls while his siblings were outside playing football.

Does the range of disciplinary action change as your kids enter the teen years? I’m just asking because we haven’t reached puberty in our house yet, and I’d like to be as prepared as possible. Gayla seemed to do the right thing, in the case of the overzealoustext messaging teens. I would have done the same. My husband would have taken the phones and smashed them with a sledge hammer, not as a lesson, but out of sheer anger. It would have cost us in the long run, when we had to buy new phones, but it is his natural reaction to stuff like that. I can’t tell you how many toys have been broken and thrown away, as the result of a fight over possession!

Since we don’t have the money to buy new phones every time the bill comes, I’m thinking that we need to devise a plan ahead of time. Sound off on your preffered methods of corrective action (aka punishment) in the comment section.

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The teen boys in love drama keeps getting deeper.  So deep in fact that MySpace accounts had to be deleted and to be honest, I’m not sure they’ll be getting those back any time soon.

Also seized are three cell phones. 

Life around here has gotten far more boring - but so much more productive!

Yesterday was the day the cell phone bill arrived in the mail.  It wasn’t the total amount of the bill that threw me into a state of shock - it was the number of text messages that pushed me over the edge.

As a fun dinner table activity, I gave each son a piece of paper with a number at the top of the page, a pencil and a calculator.

Step by step, I gave them instruction on what to add, what to multiply and what to divide.

1. Take the number at the top of your page and multiply it by 2.
2. Take that number and divide it by 60.
3. Take the number you have now and divide it by 24.

One son, the biggest offender started with the number 4279.

What we discovered with this project was that in the month of April he sent FOUR THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE text messages!

If the average text message takes 2 minutes to create and send (granted some are shorter and some longer, but I’m shooting for an average here) that means when all was said and done, he had spent 5.94 full TWENTY FOUR Hour Days sending text messages.

IF we consider that he is actually awake 13 hours per day - that equates down to just over 11 days.  So he spent ELEVEN full days of his waking hours sending texts.

By confiscating the phones and allowing them ONE hour per evening on them, I have given my kids back a full 1/3 of their life they would have lost.

Just imagine, he was sending texts AND playing on MySpace.  There was no life outside of those.

How many hours or days did your kid spend sending text messages last month?

(images: stock.xchng)

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God knows I try to have my serious moments once in a while.  Those priceless moments where I pay tribute to what wonderful kids I have, but when I have a doggie laying next to me with the worst case of gas EVER, it’s difficult to be sentimental.  In fact, it’s taking everything I have to keep from running to the restroom with the worst case of heaves ever.

Kadi did such a wonderful job of putting her Mother’s Day into a photo journal and as much as I wish I had a day filled with family, love, spoiling and pictures to prove it - the fact is, I have nothing fancy, no pictures, but ahhh what a day.

Everyone tiptoed around the house and let me stay in bed until noon!

We had yummy hamburgers on the grill and hubby cooked them just the way *I* like them, not his way.  I like mine just under charcoal briquette!

The kids gathered a basket of fresh veggies from the garden.  We have some cold weather items coming on already.  Green onions were such a treat yesterday.

It was rainy, gloomy and cold most of the day - but it sure made for the perfect day to stay indoors and force my family of men (or men wannabe’s) to watch a movie I want to watch.  I chose Over Her Dead Body.  I love that movie, but that’s another post for another time.

The evening ended on a familiar note with my husband and I watching on as the children delete their MySpace profiles and hand over their cell phones.  Just wait until you read about that!

Ahh, the joys of motherhood.

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