August 31st, 2010 – 3.2 Mile Run

The continued prayer is, “Lord keep me focused. Keep my mind stayed on You. Help me to bring You praise. I know You believe in me. Please help me in my unbelief. Amen.”

Tonight’s run was a wonderful and glorious treat. Unfortunately, I couldn’t act like it. We got a note from Jordan’s teacher telling us that he was not behaving in class… Already?! Seriously?! The school year *just* started!

I told him he had a spanking coming, but I would grant him the opportunity to work it off…. And that would manifest itself in a 3 mile run. Now, before you start calling CPS on me, we’ve taken him to therapy and we’ve been told that while he shows signs of Sensory Seeking issues, he does not have ADHD. Then we were told that a child like Jordan needs extra physical activity and discipline. They suggested Occupational Therapy, but after a few sessions, it just seemed as though we were paying people a ridiculous amount just to play with him for about a half hour, then tell us a bunch of stuff we already knew about him.

I say that to say, extra physical activity is a fine mode of discipline for a kid like Jordan. The rule was, if he completed the run and did the best he could, he could work off the spanking. Any whining or complaining would result in him getting the spanking and he would STILL have to finish the run. He agreed and I was praying that he would live up to it cuz really, I hate issuing the spankings. It’s my least favorite part of being his mommy, so any way I can negotiate different options is OK with me.

It’s also a pretty fine balance I have to keep when I’m using running as punishment because I really don’t want him to grow up hating to run. So I told him about Sports Beans and gave him one before the start of the run with a cup of water. I told him we would take another bean and more water at the end of mile one. Then again at the end of mile 2.

This wasn’t the best workout, but that’s OK. It was all about spending time with my boy and getting to the bottom of his issues at school. It was really great. We stopped and danced at every traffic light so our heart rates wouldn’t drop. He was a really good sport, shaking his booty in public with his mom. People were smiling / laughing at him but he didn’t care. It made him dance harder.

We did it 4 and 1. At the first walk break, I asked him what the deal was at school. He told me that he just wasn’t paying attention and wanted to do some of the cool things his desk mate was doing. I told him to try to focus and get all the work down quickly, then tell the teacher and maybe she’ll have a cool game or puzzle he can work on while the rest of the class finishes up and if there was any cool thing he wanted to do with his desk mate, he should write it all down and do it at recess.

He said he’d try. We ran some more.

At about the 1.5 mile point he saw the trail head we came to the last time we ran together and asked if we could run the trail. That wasn’t the plan, but I let it flow. I gave him another bean and some water because we missed the one mile mark and this trail is pretty hilly.

So we run about a quarter of a mile up the hill, then down again. He’s doing a fairly decent job keeping up with me and I gotta say, I’m proud of him. At about the 2.5 mile point, I start doing a Marine Corp Cadence. He immediately picks it up and learned the words and he wants to lead it.

I told him the Military was where he was headed if he didn’t want to behave in school. After graduation, he’d better have a plan cuz I don’t pay bills for grown folks!

Good run! I loved it and so did he. Now let us pray for a good day at school.