Why we have punishments

Nikki is what you would call a firecracker. She absolutely loves life and hates to be excluded from anything. Unfortunately it also makes her somewhat disobedient at times (it makes my wife crazy).

So today we were planning on taking all the kids to the pool and swimming for about an hour. When I got back this morning from my gym workout (also swimming) Nikki and Kara became locked in a battle of wills. We were trying to just talk to the entire family about the plan for the day which included cleaning up our rooms, eating breakfast and going to the pool. While we were attempting this, Nikki was sitting at the piano plunking out random notes just to make noise and nothing drives Kara crazier (actually my driving is number one, so this is number two) is when she is trying to speak and she keeps getting interrupted. She asked Nikki to stop it nicely once, twice, three times, and she kept doing it. Then Kara told her to stop it the fourth time and told her that if she didn't stop she wouldn't be going swimming.

Nikki looked her square in the eye and plinked the keys on the piano (I think plink is a word). At that point Kara says "No swimming today." This didn't phase Nikki until she found out that the rest of the family was still going swimming and she would be sitting out and just watching. Suddenly we were inundated with requests for another chance, and please please please let me swim.

This is where I stepped in. I turned to her and (not yelling by the way, I found that talking in a calm manor infuriates them more and makes it more memorable) told her that if she asks for another chance one more time there will be no friends today either. Nikki lives and dies by her friends. They are her life. She stopped asking and pretty much accepted her fate.

The hard thing with this is that I wanted her to go swimming. I want her to have friends and to play. Trust me it's a lot easier to have her play with a friend than to have me try and entertain her all day.
While Nikki was supplicating us for another chance, Kara and I conferenced (meaning we shut the door to the bathroom and told the kids we were getting ready) and got on the same game plan. It worked. She stopped blubbering and actually accepted her punishment.

She did ask later why we have to have punishments. We told her we are trying to teach her how to not be a snot when she grows up and that if we didn't give her punishments she would never learn how to be a good person, what's right and wrong, shoot 3 under par, get good gas mileage, ya know, all the important stuff.