Mom, Don't You Want To Take A Break?

That's what Sean said to me about five times today.

"Moooom... don't you want to take a break?"

It started at about 1:00pm and repeated steadily until 4:00pm when I finally left the home office to take him out for an early dinner and drop him at youth church.

Before you wonder if Kelly has been a workaholic lately - the answer is no. I've spent plenty of quality time outside of the home office. What makes today so painful for the teenager is that he was grounded off of him computer.

So no computer games to bury himself in. No Ventrilo to chat with all his buddies. Sad, sad teenager.

I laid out some time constraints after he had to take an entire month off from his video games and instant messengers in order to refocus on school work and get his head out of his... um.. well you know.

Sean is a great kid. I'm proud of him and he's going places! But boy oh boy can he lose himself in those video games! Hour after hour after hour if I don't stop him.

So, the rule is four hours maximum on the computer every day. (He homeschools - so he probably get's way more computer time than most high school students do.) And I expect him to police himself about the clock rather than wait for me to hollar at him.

You know that phrase, 'give him enough rope to...' well, that's what I've been doing. I refuse to nag or remind him about time. That makes me feel like a grouch and he certainly doesn't enjoy it either. So I tell him to keep track of time and get off when he hits four hours.

But - he doesn't. So when I am positively certain that he has ran over on his time I ask him. "Have you been on longer than four hours?" He usually gives me some kind of sheepish 'I don't know" answer which leads me to ask again, 'Sean - have you been on longer than your alloted time today?' and then he admits, yeah, probably.

And then I tell him he's lost computer priveleges for the next day. Then he grumbles a lot and shuts the computer off.

So this little pattern has occured twice a week for two weeks and so yesterday - the same thing. He shows no restaint at all and when I come home from my evening meeting I can tell that he has played the entire time even though he doesn't have time left on the clock for it.

I refuse to get mad about this. He's a big boy and it's time to up the ante. So I let him know he'd be taking two days off now - and that it will continue to grow exponentially if he can't get a grip.

All that to explain why he was so bored and why he wanted Mom to come out of the home office and entertain him.

I suppose tomorrow will be more of the same!