This one... Mr. Cane

He's really been teaching me patience recently.

The stubborness has set in and he reacts in the passive aggressive way sometimes when either one of us "wrongs" him sometimes.

He's not stupid. He can read our faces and understands our plot to get him to give in... I've introduced the cane. Something which i thought long and hard about. There have always been two schools of thought on this . I believe in using the cane but sparingly. I was brought up with it and boy... was it a scary time. My dad was the disciplinarian at home. And my brother and I had our fair share of lashing. I think we even once tried stuffing tissue paper in our underwear to take up the load of the cane. Didn't work. Not only were we canned for the things we did wrong but we were given extra lashes for trying to out smart our dad. And when the tissue dropped out, we walked away with red butt cheeks and facial cheeks from the embarrassment of it all.

Last night, I canned Nate once really hard.

Just so that he knows that Mr. Cane is not someone to mess with and hopefully I'd never have to use it again (wishful thinking) or well, i'm sure it'll be much less.

I tried reasoning with him but it didn't work.

I was also trying to play Mr. Nice Guy in the family after he apparently threw tantrums and made both adults (my mom and terence) very angry. The rebel in him then started to surface.. He would throw the toys at his father, and when we applied the "if you're naughty, we'll throw away one Thomas train"... Didn't work.. Everytime we asked him if he wanted us to throw them away, he would say "YES" to get back at us...

The one thing I kept very conscious about was that during the whole time of disciplining, I had to remain calm. Once I let my temper go out of control, I would have given him more than he deserved... You see, I realised that this whole disciplining thing is not just for him, but for me as a parent as well. Need to find balance.