Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde!

Our house is a little more peaceful than it was this morning. You may not believe it but our sweet boy, Hyrum, was putting up a big stink all morning. I know, it is strange. It all started with his scooter. He wants to keep it in the house (when he remembers to bring it in). I want it outside. Today I decided to make it a rule that it should stay outside. I didn't think it would be a big issue because we were dealing with Hryum and not Hannah and he already left it outside a lot of the time. But since I decided that it now HAD to stay outside he was not going to let that happen. I told him that he could choose to leave it right up next to the house by the 4-wheeler or he could put it in either side of the shed. If he still wanted to fight about it I would lock it up until tomorrow. I gave him 15-20 min. to get over the sulk and make a wise choice but he refused. So I had to take it away and lock it up. However, I first had to take him outside and lock him out of the house because he was putting up such a fight! After that I let him back in and told them all that it was time to pick up the family room. He refused and just sat there on the couch. I talked the girls into cleaning without him by talking up the whole service bit. You know, we are going to serve our family by cleaning this room and especially Hyrum by cleaning up his stuff for him even when he was acting like this. I was surprised that it worked, but Hannah was in a very giving and righteous mood so it did. However, Hyrum tried to make things harder for us by throwing the stuff on the couch onto our cleaned off floor and pulling out everything under the couch. This was not in the attitude of helping us to do a good job, however, but just to make us work harder. Paul told me to tell him that we would lock him in his room if he was going to continue to hinder us in our efforts or be disrespectful. For a while he left us alone, but when we went to clean the girls room he shut the door on us and held it closed so the girls couldn't get out to put things away! So, he was locked up. After banging on walls to get attention he decided to beat on his door. After a few loud crashes and such from things being thrown or banged on the door I went in there and there were some holes in his door and pieces of the molding around the door and frame were laying on the ground along with the vent that is over his door! I therefore told him that he would now have to stay in there until his dad came home (about 1/2 an hour). Actually the vent fell off after I told him this in one of his other fits. I kept telling the girls to ignore him, but their way of ignoring him was to tell him that "mom said to ignore you!" Or "we can't talk to you right now" They just had to say something! Hannah is a little mother and trying to point out just where he was wrong and repeating all the things I had told him and also to point out the ways that she had made the right choice ( i.e. that she left her bike outside or in the shed when we told her to without making a fuss.) You can imagine how this was appreciated by her brother. Paul came home finally and spanked him and locked him in the room again! But before you turn us over to Social Services or whatever, we told him he could come out when he stopped making a fuss and could be good for five minutes. So about 7-10 min. later he was finally a free man again. Anyway, I am glad that he seems to have recovered and that he is now playing nicely with everyone. His dad told him to come and ask me if there was anything that he could do to help me and he did it in the nicest way. My sweet boy was back! I don't know if I am tough enough for this mothering gig!