Can't

My struggles with Cakes continue. I decided several weeks ago to let her develop and demonstrate self-discipline. One unexpected thing happened - her handwriting has miraculously and drastically improved! She's perfectly capable of writing neatly, but doesn't care to take the time. I pestered her about it a lot in the past and she's had it on a goal chart for a good long time. I haven't said a word about it in weeks and suddenly everything she wrote last week was perfect. She put more stickers on her chart last week than she had in two months (and it's not that big a chart). I've only been checking her homework for completeness, not accuracy, and haven't lingered around offering help with homework or piano unless she asks for help.

Thursday after gymnastics she told me her coach asked her to do 10 push ups every night this week. She didn't have to tell me that, I never would have known any different, but she told me. The first night she tried there was lots of crying, "I can't" and "It's too hard." For some reason she thinks those are magic words that make unpleasant things disappear. But then Saturday she told Grandaddy all about how she's been working on push ups and demonstrated some very nice ones for him. Last night we did push ups as a family.

Friday I got another email from her piano teacher saying Cakes absolutely refused to even discuss the Spring Recital, said she's not going to do it and doesn't care that it's required. I should have thought to warn her about that. Cakes will do it, but she's not going to like it or be happy about it and there will probably be lots of tears involved.

Last night we were cleaning up the family room so we could play some family games. In the process I saw that she had not done her math homework at all. She came home from school yesterday, went out to the backyard with her backpack and then about 20 minutes later she came to ask what she could do next, leaving me to assume she'd done her homework. I told her she could practice piano, which she did for about 5 minutes. I assumed she'd been doing her homework outside. My immediate response after seeing her untouched math worksheet was "no friends tomorrow." We then told her she'd have to finish cleaning up then she'd miss out on game time while she finished her homework. She of course walked away wailing and crying and saying how mean I am and how unfair her miserable life his.

That made me mad (it usually does) so I called her back into the family room and yelled at her saying she has no right to call me mean because she made a bad decision. I trusted her to finish her work. I did not do or say anything mean to her, if she wanted to be mad at someone she ought to be mad at herself because she was the one that did something wrong not me. She's always telling Scott that I'm so mean to her, even says that I hate her and I'm pretty tired of hearing that and being blamed for every speck of unhappiness in her life.

She went back to her homework and we started playing Mouse Trap (a rather disastrous attempt I might add, with Bubba trying to help out). She eventually finished her math after wailing and crying and asking for help and saying she doesn't know what to do. The girl needs to learn to read and follow directions. She did manage to join us for some of the game and the we pigged out on leftover ice cream and brownies dropped off by our home teacher. (The remaining ice cream went in the trash.)

I was impressed this morning when she asked me to check her math worksheet and didn't lose it when I told her what was wrong and talked her through the solutions.

But then I was cleaning up this morning and went to put her piano notebook away. She told me she only had assignments in one of her four books this week, and I believed her and hadn't looked because I was letting her figure things out. She has assignments in all four of her books! And not just one page, but several!

Looks like we'll be having a talk when she gets home from school...