I WILL Bless the LORD at ALL Times

His praise shall continually be in my mouth. 

My soul shall make her boast in the LORD, 

the humble shall hear thereof and be glad.

James is working on learning Psalm 34. He has learned verse 1 and 2 so far.
The drawings help a ton!
I love that it is about praise. SO positive!

He's also working on his attitude towards his school work.

Whenever things started to go South I had him do jumping jacks today,
or stairs
and recite his verses
and count by 5s.

He had to do a lot of each today. It was tough sometimes, but I wouldn't let up until the mad was replaced with glad. I had him look me in the eye each time he got to the top of the stairs and I would smile and recite his verses for him . When he would decide it wasn't worth the work (long past when I would have thought it wasn't worth the effort if I were him, as many as 25 sets of stairs) and he would begin to smile and be sweet we would talk about what the verses mean and he would have to recite them with the proper facial expression.

We talked about what it means to be humble and contrasted that with what it means to be proud.

It made for kind of a long haul. He  was really wanting to control the situation, but we brought him around again and again. He had clothes to fold in between, so it wasn't as tedious as it might have been.

He's out sledding now. And the ladybug timer is set for every thirty minutes to remind him to come in and use the facilities. :-)

He is actually more tired of his "games" than I am at the moment. When he first starts my heart pounds and I get shaky.... scrambling to put a stop to the nonsense before he gets into it, knowing where it could lead... BUT once I have a plan and I feel like things aren't beyond certain perimeters then I am fine. If things escalate beyond hope then I can pull out the "hike the mountain" card or have him go to his room so I can walk away. Otherwise, Ohhhhh boy!

Oh, and we are ending these disciplinary exercises with him saying,
 "Yes, mom, Thank you for strengthening my mind and body."

lol. That was Bri's contribution to the plan. She says that's what kids have to say if there were told to do push ups as a reminder to follow the rules at Bible Camp. I think it's a great reminder to him why he's being disciplined in the first place.