Breaking the Rules

My daughter has been breaking the rules all day long.  Well, since she went upstairs after her brother left for a birthday party.    She was cranky and didn't want us coming in her room.   She even snapped at her father and said she didn't want any food.  What ever could be going on?

I told her I was worried about her and came up after a while and rubbed her back while she listened to her current audiobook.   She paused it after a while and then told me she was breaking the rules.   She was listening to a podcast that her class listened to while they had snack each day.  It was an exciting story broken into lots of six-minute segments.  There were hundreds of these little episodes, and my daughter was not only a few ahead of her class, she was many, many episodes ahead.  

She just wanted to listen to it so badly.   I told her I understood.   She was pretty upset about breaking the rules, but she wanted to find out what happened next so badly she was willing to take the guilt in order to find out what happened next.   And then after that, and then after that...

The Big Boy Update:  My son is doing fairly well with the new points system of "regaining your parent's trust" so far.   He is motivated, which is a good thing.   I do want him to be successful.