Crime and Punishment

The other night, Brad and I were lying in bed chatting before sleeping (coz bedtime is a great time to be in bed). This used to be a nightly thing, chatting in bed before going to sleep, until Brad started working all the freaking time, staying up until midnight or later and not snuggling with me until I'm ready to go to sleep, the bastard!

Where was I? Oh yeah, so we were chatting and talking about our daughter, Moon Unit. Moon Unit is, for lack of a better word, a slug. Okay, so that's not entirely true. She is, in fact, a person, not some slimy, creepy, insecty-type garden creature that's pretty much a snail without a shell. But she reminds me of one sometimes most of the time all the time. Because she is so seriously unmotivated, we were supposed to be all structured with her and stuff, making charts and what-not, to encourage her to do... something. Anything. Only, you know, I've only tried to do that her entire life to absolutely no avail. This was something I was informed by Brad that we need to do, which I can only assume came as a directive of some sort from Moon Unit's therapist.

Anyway, since Brad works from home and since Moon Unit seems to ignore almost everything I say to her, he's been the one who's been implementing some of these things. He's the one who's been trying to get her on some sort of schedule, getting her to do some work for him, etc. Except that Brad is really not a hard-ass. He just can't be. It's not in his nature.

So while we're chatting the other night, he goes, "Oh, I need to take Moon Unit's chair away from her", referring to her desk chair, as she spends like pretty much all day on her laptop. So I go, "Why do you need to take her chair away from her?" And he's like, "Because she didn't get up on time this morning."

Silence for a minute.

"So you're taking her chair away from her because she didn't get up on time?"

"Yes." Silence again.

"You do realize that she doesn't actually need her chair. She can sit on her bed with her laptop. Or at the kitchen table. Or on the sofa," I say, thinking this is completely obvious.

"I know but if I take her chair away, she'll remember to go to bed on time and get up on time. And next step is turning out her lights."

Crickets chirp.

"So," I say, "you're going to take away her chair, turn out her lights, and let her sit on her bed in the dark with her laptop. Or she can go into another room and play on her laptop with lights on."

"Okay, so I'm not very good at punishment," he says defensively.

"Ya think?!?"

This is why I love Brad.