iRage

Taylor owns an iPod touch. He worked and earned the money to buy it and now carries it around playing with it all the time. This is not a problem until you ask him to do something. He is then conveniently deaf to your inquiries, or he will acknowledge the request but then become so engrossed in the game that he will "forget" to get it done. He then becomes angry if you ask him to do it again. He tells me that he can manage his own time, but I think that if I wait for him to put away his laundry to clean out the dishwasher on his own time we would never have clean dishes and the laundry room would not have room for anyone else's clothes. When he does finally do the task he stomps around the house murmuring to himself words of anger and woe.

This has become very tiresome so I told him that from this point onward he has 5 minutes from the time of my request to put the ipod away and to begin the task. If he does not then the ipod is mine and I will only ask once. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever Mom.

This is what happened about 30 minutes later when I took away the ipod after asking him to clean up his room. Unfortunately, he began the repair on his wall before I could take a picture of the punch mark. I think you can still get the idea.

We then told him to go outside and cool off. Unfortunately, he saw Tom's drill and the flower pots on our front porch.

Well, now the ipod is mine until everything is repaired or replaced. You can see that he is pretty motivated as he started on his wall the evening after the tantrum. Hope he learns to control his temper a little better.