Mad as hell

DeepSpice and I are very unhappy with BallFiend today. Actually that's putting mildly. We are furious...

Up until he started school, BallFiend had a swimming lesson every Monday morning at the civilised time of 11 am. Then, a few weeks before he started school, I moved heaven and earth to secure a weekend lesson time for him.

In the end, the only time available was at the very uncivilised time of Sundays at 9am. I considered not doing swimming until a less-masochistic lesson time became available. But the staff member at the pool talked me around:

• The instructor for the Sunday 9am lesson was a man that had been a fill-in teacher once or twice before and BallFiend had liked him. 
• We would still have our whole Sunday free to do other things. (Compared with an 11 am lesson that basically writes-off the entire day.) 
• I also thought that since we have to be at school by 9am five days a week, having to be somewhere by 9am on a Sunday would help to keep us in the routine. 

So I booked BallFiend in for the 9am Sunday lesson and then each Monday for the preceding three weeks, I checked with the swimming pool staff to make sure his Sunday lesson booking was confirmed. (I have several other friends who have booked lessons for their kids, then on the day they turn up to start, the swimming pool staff have mucked up the lesson times, leaving them very frustrated.)  I was assured everything was in order for BallFiend to start his Sunday 9am lesson from 12 February.

Early this morning, I roused everyone in the house so we could get BallFiend to the pool on time. DeepSpice agreed to take him and I stayed home with Thumper. I warned DeepSpice about how the pool staff have mucked up a lot of lesson bookings and that if for some reason they don't have BallFiend booked in, he should throw a proper tantrum about it.

As it turned out, it was BallFiend who was the problem, not the administratively-challenged pool staff. At 9.05 am, I got a message from DeepSpice saying that BallFiend is refusing to go in the pool. At 9.22 am, I got a second message: "We are coming home..."

So, today we wasted $12.00 on a swimming lesson that BallFiend wouldn't participate in and got up early on a Sunday morning for nothing. Now DeepSpice and I are racking our brains trying to come up with a 'natural consequence' that will fit the behaviour. It all seems so pointless. That Sunday morning sleep-in is something we can never get back.
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