Grounded again.

Yesterday, Tater my normally non impulsive and gentle child punched the little girl that lives next door in the stomach. After my initial horror, I made him apologize, and then sent him to his room. Where, I loudly proclaimed, he would stay forever.

The first story I was given was that they were playing kick/basket ball. D decided to kick the ball when she shouldn't have? I'm not real clear on that part. Anyway, this angered Tater so he punched her in the stomach.

After he spent a great deal of time in his room, and I calmed down enough to speak to him without resorting to violence myself. I asked him to sit down and explain to me why he hit D. He was a little too eager to tell his story because he had a plan. A story so well thought out that he thought maybe just maybe I would buy his load of crap. Sadly for him, his well thought out story wasn't that well thought out.

He looked at me with the sad puppy dog eyes and began, "I'm going through puberty, ya know?"

I know, you're thinking, this has what? to do with punching another child. Because that's exactly what I was thinking. But I didn't stop him. I needed to hear this, so I let him continue.

"Puberty is a stressful time. It makes me stressed out and crazy. And D bothers me. One time when we were playing basketball she hit me in the face with the ball, but I didn't hit her that time. And today the water fountains were turned off, and they only had chocolate milk at lunch. I don't like chocolate milk. So I didn't drink it. I wanted lemonade. Then when I came home, I was so dehydrated. I drank a whole glass of lemonade. And then I was going to drink some water but I decided to play basketball instead. So I was dehydrated. And that's why I punched her."

Right there you have it. Dehydration makes you punch people. So please be sure to drink plenty of water, because I would hate to see this happen to others. ;)