Arrgh! Dennis the Menace meets Paris Hilton

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Aaarrggh! It's bad enough that difficult child used my credit card for online gaming, got hacked, and wasted over $300 of our money. Today I told him to turn on the sprinkler to water the plants along the fence (herbs in French pots, tomato plants on the ground) and I just walked out to check on it. Four hours of watering the driveway!!!! :rollingpin:
I don't care if he sees me type this: Camp can't come soon enough. :hangin:
 

msmlb

New Member
Well.....the driveway is clean now.

We have many of those "are you (expletive) kidding me" moments at my house.


Hope you have a good weekend


Melissa
 

susiestar

Roll With It
We only had one summer where Wiz had camp. I also envy. What is it about common sense that they cannot grasp? Of course, I was always thankful my difficult child just refused to do things. My gfgbro would do them in such a way as to cause hundreds or thousands of dollars in damages.

At least the driveway is clean.

What would happen if you made difficult child pay you for the cost of the water and any electricity used for the period where he was wasting it on the driveway? Charge him and make it come out of his game money or make him owrk it off at minimum wage - but each task is given a certain amt of time that it could be done in by a non-difficult child working hard and he only gets paid for that amt of time when the job is done RIGHT. For example, weedeating might take you an hour so he is given 1 hour's wages at minimum wage when he is done regardless of how long it takes him to do it.

WOuld that reduce the number of times something like this happens? We found with Wiz that it did. Nothing worked but holding him financially responsible - and letting him know that no matter what Grandpa told him, the "allowance" that Gpa gave him was going to be used to pay us back. ANY $$ he got was going to be used, not just money he wanted to count. Esp when we made him go to the store and buy things to replace what he wasted. He once used every single spice in my kitchen to make "potions" and to "cook" raw hamburger in his room. I not only made him pay the doctor bill for the food poisoning (the third time it happened, not the first two times), I made him actually go to the store and get the number of pounds of meat and the same brand/size of the spices he took and pay the store for them. paying the store made it seem more real than paying me for the same things. He would accuse me of inflating the prices when I would actually round down most of the time, not having him pay the taxes or whatever on his portion of a bill. So having to pay it all was a wake-up call and motivated him. He is a tightwad and HATED to give us $$$ for anything.

That is just a thought. I know it helped us get him to the point that he stopped wasting things just to waste them.
 
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