sometimes they teach me...

(sorry i haven't updated in so long. my husband and i have recently discovered the $1.00 video rental store. this has greatly affected my blog writing....)
yesterday i was "horribly mean teacher". recently miona has been goofing off during lessons. she sometimes gets better with "corner" threats, but yesterday she was influencing maya and they were goofing off together. i said, "maya, if you don't stop i'm going to move you to another spot on the carpet." she kept it up and i finally said "maya! elephant!" (meaning that she should go sit on the elephant on the carpet, which was far away from where she was.). she almost cried and i just couldn't force her to do it so i asked if she was going to be a good girl. and she said yes.
then tadashi kept playing with this towel. i said "tadashi, if you don't stop playing with your towel, i'm going to take it away from you." he kept playing and i took it. he immediately started crying and i felt bad cuz maya looked like she wanted to cry too (like she was thinking "why is shannon so mean today?"). so i gave it back fairly quickly.
the problem here was that i wasn't giving them warnings in language that they understood. maya did not understand that i was going to make her move seats. tadashi did not understand that i was going to take his towel away. so this made it all the more shocking when i actually did it.
i realized later in the day that i should have phrased my warnings in more of a question. for example, i should have said "maya, elephant??" and then she would have understood more when i told her to go sit on elephant.
well, lesson learned.

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