Devon's first grounding...

EEEP!

For those of you who know me well enough, you'll remember I have PTSD like issues when it comes to situations involving control or removal of choices. This makes discipline hard for me, sometimes even traumatic, blah!

Dev's been my son for a year and a half, and he just recently finished with his very first grounding from me ever! Both the kids use the Sneek Yuus Nuu hud, which is awesome, but the stupid name annoys me. Anyway, it allows you to set a time period for grounding your kids, which, as a feature to the hud, is awesome.

Dev's been having issues with maintaining his urge to climb lately, and so I'd done the "family rule" with him of  1st offense - warning, 2nd - time out 4 minutes (1 minute per year of age), 3rd double time out!
I know of at least 2 instances in there that he got a slide or extra little warnings also. I'd been expecting and waiting for the day the big 3 day grounding would come, cause after the last climbing event happened, I'd warned him that the next time would mean 3 days of being restricted.

Lo and behold, it took about 2 month's maybe, and I logged in to find the little bugger on top of my upper kitchen cabinets! He was just hanging out there.. apparently got up and couldn't figure out how to get down. I'm truly surprised he hadn't fashioned himself a modified fishing pole out of string, a stick and gum, and tried to fish for cookies... I really shouldn't give him ideas.. let's move on.

So he gets his punishment doled out, all the while my gut is twisting and my entire body is buzzing. I was truly frightened. Thankfully, Dev knows about my RL past and why I flip out over stuff like this, and his reaction and reassurance that he was fine, really helped me to also be ok. Flash forward to the next day.. which happened to be a weekend, and so if Dev had wanted to explore. the hud made it impossible, he was restricted to our parcel. I remember locking the gate (RL) to go to town, and a cold chill passing over me as I thought about Dev stuck in the SL house and unable to move. A sweat started to tickle at me as I got into the truck to go take part in my RL stuff, and I thought to myself..

He's home...

Which means he's safe. I calmed down some and took a few deep breaths and told myself he'd be ok, and I'd be checking in as soon as I could. Day one went pretty well. However that evening what did I see but a Devy walking across the top bar of the swingset just as happy go lucky as can be.  

>:(

Oh yeah.. he got an extra day of grounding added to his sentence. That's my son.. the climber.

All in all, Dev did great, and I'm pretty proud of myself for not having a major hysterical breakdown, I didn't even have one flashback to my RL past. So, I'd call the situation a win, if only my son would stop climbing..

I have a funny feeling it isn't over yet.  :P