So almost exactly one week after her first offense, Squid got herself into trouble again.  Only this time it involved the library and her access to Myspace.  Over the past few years she’s gotten into trouble repeatedly for im’ing with people she didn’t know and her multiple inappropriate Myspace pages.  Since about the age of 6 or 7, she’s always been hard headed so regardless of the infraction or the punishment. 5 minutes after the punishment would be over, she’d do the same thing again.  Needless to say, she got her 3 strikes and lost rights to the computer or the internet were revoked quite some time ago.It took us a few days to come up with another good punishment since we’d taken everything of value away with the first situation.  With the exception of Halloween.  Hmmm.  She lost out on some other Halloween related activities at school, but was given the choice, either lose Halloween itself and trick-or-treating or take plan b.She chose plan b, and as promised, we came up with something quite creative, somewhat painful and hopefully something she’ll learn from. Thanks to Carleen…Squid now will now be sitting through 2 documentaries on subjects of our choice followed by written report.  Right now it’s looking it will be something we watched on Sunday about the decrease in the bee population, either the thing about the polar bear situation (apparently they’re eating each other), or Al Gore’s documentary on global warming.Also, she will be reading 2 or 3 books of our choice again followed by written reports.  We’re compiling a reading list including some classics as well some other good reads.  So far we’ve got Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, the Joy Luck Club, Flowers in the Attic, Kristin Lavransdatter, and Catcher in the Rye. So this weekend we’ll be going to get the first book.  Keven wants a second copy so he can read along too.

Since the obvious concern arose about what to do if she got her reward (Halloween) without fulfilling her end of the bargain, we are holding her Halloween candy stash until her debt is paid in full!!

Final Score:  Parents 2, Teenager 0

Final Score:  Parents 1, Teenager 0

Keven talked about Squid’s first official offense on the eve of his birthday.  We kicked into high gear and put a tough punishment into place.  Txt messaging shut off at the phone company, cellphone, Ipod, fun afterschool activities with friends taken away until Halloween, no hair straightener.  She also had to write a letter of apology to her friend’s parents and a composition to us addressing a variety of issues she’d been instructed to.  Well, both of the items had reasonable deadlines, but she just decided she wasn’t going to do them, citing that she’d done the letter on the computer at her dad’s and since he was on his 3 week honeymoon, unless I drove her all the way over there to get it, it was going to wait until he got back.  You can imagine how well that went over.  We talked to her a couple of times about this and how the letter was to be hand-written and it would take her about 15 minutes to write one.  She was obstinate in her position that she wasn’t going to do it.  Period.  Oh really!  We had an intervention of sorts or maybe more like a forewarning.  Since her hair straightener and cellphone are her most prized possessions (Ipod coming in at a close 3rd), that gave us some leverage.  We told her for each day she was late on each item, an extra day would be added to the punishment.  She dug in her heels, basically she heatedly and stubbornly said she wasn’t going to do it.  Fine.  The next day, Keven came home early and called to tell me without conversation, she’d started writing her apology letter.  By the time I’d gotten home, she’d finished her paper for us.  And they were done well.  We were quite pleased.  Then we did the tally.  An extra 8 days were added to her original punishment end date.  Since she wasn’t going to be able to go to her dad’s, there was no way either or them could worm out of it or manipulate it.  New estimated release date, November 8th.