The MWAB had convinced himself ... no ... that is not strong enough. The MWAB had it imprinted on his genes that if he just held out long enough, it would become easier for us to turn a blind eye to his room and refusal to help out than continue to try and force him to comply.

We were weak and he was strong ... no matter how much we punished him. Obviously, since he is our kid and we love him, we would only go so far with punishment ... and that's where he had us. He could take our best shot and still maintain the ability to refuse to conform.

Eventually, as he got older, the arguments over chores and his room slowly subsided. You can only mete out so much punishment to a teenager in high school before it becomes silly. Also, as he matured, he learned how to make it at least appear that he did something to keep his room up. He went from denial (latent ... never blatant ... which made it even harder to keep up with the punishments) to half effort to being very good at hiding messes in his room.

So you see why our approach to the two younger kids, the Jungle Boys, was affected by our experiences with the MWAB.

God Bless America.

Enjoy!