I love you, I don't like what you did, but I always love you

This is what I found myself saying to E last night and again this morning. It seems that when my child is indulged, insolence is what follows. I have ordered E a bunch of books that belong to a series called "Help Me Be Good" and I hope it includes one on insolence. I won't delve into what she has done as her aberrant behaviour belongs to noone but her. Once, she was doing something that I thought was incredibly funny so I was going to share it with my sister, but E told me that she didn't want anyone to know. I wish I could share it, because it was both clever and funny, but E has said that she doesn't want people to know. I guess she considers it her secret trick. Let's just say, she's figured out a way to save herself some time on days when she doesn't want to miss a thing.

Anyway, back to her behaviour last night and this morning. It was the kind of behaviour that is very uncharacteristic of my little E and she has suffered the loss of her entire allowance as a result. To tell you just how insolent she became, she thought she now had a free license to behave any which way since her allowance was gone. Shocking, until I surprised myself by whispering that if she kept it up, I could keep subtracting until she "never ever gets an allowance ever again." I think I surprised E more than myself as her insolence ended at that moment. I felt a twinge of sadness to be so extreme with her, and then followed with "I love you. I don't like what you did, but I always love you." We finished this morning with big hugs. I so love my kid! :)