Contest of Wills

The kids have been doing a great job recently of sorting through all of their things to get rid of everything that they no longer use in order to make room for them to actually live in their rooms rather then just having space for their stuff. However this morning J decided that he did not want to sort through all of the cloths that his mother brought over, saying it would be easier for him to just keep everything in the bags. Translation: I don't want to do this because you are interrupting my Wii time. DH put his foot down and set J to his room to complete the task but J still refused to sort his cloths. Instead he sat on the corner of his bed sulking.

When DH gave me an update of his day on my break at work, I told him I refuse to allow any more contests of wills between him and a 10 year old (this has been a reoccuring theme for quite a while). I advised DH to start threatening to take things away from J, starting with the keyboard and mouse to his computer. Apparently this worked because J started sorting his cloths.

And then fell asleep in them. I swear the boy can fall asleep at will and does anytime he is being forced to do something that he doesn't want to. Unfortunately, this is a disagreement between me and DH. He says that if J falls asleep like that he apparently needs his sleep and lets him do it, resulting in J getting out of many chores.

I think when I go to bed tonight I'm going to take all the wii remotes into the bedroom with me. J tends to get up (who knows how early) and starts playing his games before anyone else gets up. If a 10 year old can not make it through the day without passing out I say there is something wrong and he apparently needs encouragement to sleep more. Fine. I'll provide the encouragement.

UPDATE:

Apparently after only being asleep for about an hour, J woke up and informed DH that "I think I'm sick". Lightbulb goes off and DH realizes he is being played. DH and I now are agreed that all electronics will be shut down and made unavailable each night before I go to bed. J is not to be allowed down time from his assigned tasks until they are done (except eating and sleeping).

Vindication is sweet.

Changes

I never wanted to be "mom", but when I fell in love with my husband 6+ years ago I knew I would have to accept his children if I wanted to be a part of his life. At first, we believed that I would be able to pass off most of the parenting to him. However, as time passed we found that it was not possible to keep me out of the "parenting" mix, even though the kids were only with us on the weekends.

As of Christmas day(G,13, and J,10) are with us full time. My husband(H), while a stay-at-home-dad, is dealing with new mental issues resulting from an accident at work, so I am finding that I have to step in to the "mom" role more and more often.

At this point, I think it may be best to wait for the dust to settle from the holidays and see where we are left standing then. There are going to be some major differences between how their mother's house was run vs how we keep ours, as well as just dealing with the stress from the sudden change.

Wish us luck.