bad morning / good book

This morning did not go well.  I let the kids sleep in because I thought they needed it.  Okay I let them sleep in because I was half asleep on the couch myself waiting for my cup of coffee to kick in.  Those 15 minutes were not worth it.    4 out of 5 kids surveyed this morning were grouchy, snappy, and accident prone.  One mother left to deal with these folks was not so pleasant herself.  Probably a candidate for help from SuperNanny.

After dropping them off at school and vowing to go back to bed I picked up one of my partially unread library books.  Positive Discipline For Children With Special Needs  by Jane Nelsen, ED.D., et al.  ( note: is that how you say and others in latin?)  Looking in the front cover I see that this book is actually part of  a series of books on Positive Discipline. 

I grabbed this book from the library to begin with because I am at my wits end with my DD #2 who is taking out her frustration with school at home on me and anyone in her path.   All who know her tell me she keeps it together all day long at school but she gets home and is a screaming mess.    Which turns me into a screaming mess, and that's only me if we are lucky!  I also have DD#4 who has begun kindergarten and also in the same boat  for similar reasons. 

So I am going to try this book's advice out and be done with time out in the traditional sense.  I'm off to buy a bean bag to give the future offender or should I say "child with the mistaken goal" a place to chill out and calm down.   I"d better buy a big one because I'm pretty sure this person might be me.    Can't wait to tell the kids, " mommy's going to Alaska" and then plop myself down.

Big Mistake in Newsweek 9/12/11 issue

Okay so this is a week late.  The Sept 12, 2011  issue of Newsweek had a glaring mistake in it.  They identified Todd Beamer one of the many heroes of flight 93, the "let's roll" namesake as Scott Beamer.  Yes, they renamed him as they tried to honor him.
Page 11 of this issue lives up to it's title NewsBeast,  Under Who We Admire is where the mistake occurs.
"The first heroes of emerged in the first moments of the tragedy: Scott Beamer and the passengers of United Flight 93..."
   Hmmm, the stranger thing is that I've heard nothing about this error. Not even a mention in the next issue.  Has Newsweek become irrelevant?  Nobody noticed.  It's akin to someone talking to themself in the corner while the party rages on. 

I still have my subscription but I wonder why when I have to take pains to hide it from the elementary readers in my house.  I don't think Tina Brown passed down the memo that profanity isn't edgy but rather shows a  lack of vocabulary.   That's bad enough but now I will definitely think twice as I read and wonder, did they get the facts right?