"Good humour is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison"

I love Seth to bits and will always treat him like my own. He's very intelligent and grown up for his age, has some fantastic qualities and he comes out with some great one liners. I've never written a post with anything negative in about the boys before but yesterday's actions have spurred one on. As a parent I do everything i can to make my boys happy, if you're a regular reader then you know that myself and Mrs M go above and beyond to make sure the boys as happy as they can be. Because of this, the effort we make and the love and affection that both of them receive I can not tolerate unneccesary moaning and grumpy behaviour. Last night he started crying over nothing and informed us he hadn't had a good day and was very unhappy with no reason to back it up. The crying i can deal with as i know that children can find it difficult to deal with emotions but i don't like grumpyness, having an attitude and being rude, there's just no need.

After 10 minutes of his behaviour it was clear that us talking to him was having no effect so we asked him to go in to his room and sit quietly for 3 minutes to calm down. After the initial first thirty seconds where he cranked his mood up a notch and did everything he could to override the short cooling off period I had requested he calmed down and sat quietly. Once the three minutes were up I walked in to his room and asked him a series of questions (Seths response is in red):

• Does it upset you that me and mommy don't give you any affection? What's affection? (I then explained) you and mommy always give me kisses and cuddles and tell me you love me (in an abrupt tone)

• Are you hungry, do you not get fed enough? I'm always eating, there's always food!

• When you want to play and we don't want to join you does that upset you? You always sit and play with me!

• How about reading? We read together EVERY day!

• Seth have a look around your room, what do you see? Books, Toys and Games! Just a couple? No there's lots!

I'm not going to go on with the questions I'm sure you get where I'm going with this. I did continue by explaining the luxury that is taken for granted by many people, walking to the kitchen, turning on the tap and filling a glass with clean drinkable water. I told him about children being mistreated and people suffering in other countries (which Mrs M has also explained to him on more than one occassion) I then asked him one simple question.

Have you really got anything to be sad about, Do you feel like you should be treated better?

Well you dont need me to tell you want he said. He's a smart child and very rarely has these outbursts. I am fully aware that Seth has issues, being from a broken family is difficult i know that from my own childhood but he has a lot of people around him that love him dearly. When he is upset about something to do with this we talk to him like an adult and answer his questions as best we can.

Needless to say Seth understood what I was trying to say, wiped his face, apologised, gave me a cuddle and left the room to apologise to Mrs M too. We never got to the bottom if what it was that upset him today but as with every issue in our house once it is talked about, whether we get to the bottom of it or not we take out our imaginary pens and draw a line under it.... Until the next bout!

At bed time Seth very lovingly said 'I'm really sorry about my behaviour tonight' and that sort of honest apology means everything to us. Seth knows how lucky he is, he may have a room full of toys, books and games but his real wealth is the amount of attention and affection he gets from us and that will never change no matter what mood he is in.


*I had to use relevant pictures from the boys favourite books, i didn't think shoving a camera in Seth's face and asking him to pose during his melt down was appropriate. (it would have been funny though!!!)