Grant's POV
When lunch arrived everybody was ready to stop playing and eat some lunch. Well, everyone except my youngest daughter. When I signed to her that it's lunch time and we can go back to playing after we ate, she told me no, and turned her back and began running in the opposite way. I easily caught up with her and scooped her up, but the way she was yelling and screaming, trying to kick and hit me made me put her down and stand her in front of me. I signed that she was in trouble and if she wanted to have any time after lunch to play she better go over to the blanket where the food was and sit down and eat and then we would be dealing with her attitude. I don't think my heart broke after the first time I had to punish Katrina like it did when I just saw the look on Amelia's face when I told her she was in trouble. I sighed when her little lip began to quiver. I picked her up and brought her to the blanket and then fixed her a plate, which she sat and ate with her head down.
After she was done eating, she looked at me and signed if she could go play, I told her no, she was in trouble and she needed to wait until I was done eating and then we would take care of her punishment. The look of pure terror flashed across her face and for a second, I had second thoughts about how to punish my children,
“Time out for 5 minutes, sitting right next to me, then you can go play,” I signed to her.
When I see the look of terror leave her face, I knew I need to have a discussion with not only her, but also the boys because I'm going to guess that me having different punishments for her will cause them to feel angry and I don't want them to start feeling they need to retaliate thinking that I'm giving her special treatment. I didn't want them to resent Amelia for being treated differently. I’ll most likely spank Amelia at some point, but not until she fully trusts me and until she is healed emotionally from her past.
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After Amelia had finished her timeout and we all went to play a field game and around 6 pm, we decide that it was time to pack up and head home. It seemed all the kids were getting irritated with one another and the fun time was turning into a time of frustration for the adults.
“I love you, drive home safe,” Katrina tells me and I give her a hug after I give the kids a hug.
“I’m supposed to be telling you that,” I tease. I give her a hug and kiss her forehead and then I hug Tyler as they both get into their car and head in the opposite direction.
“Can I go with George and stay the night with Elijah?” Joshua asks me.
“No, I want you to come home with us, I believe you have homework that still needs to get done and I need to have a talk with your brother and you about something,” I tell him and he gives me an eye roll that I choose to ignore because I don’t want to deal with trouble right now. I’m too tired and just want to be able to go home.
“Fine, whatever,” he answers me before walking over to let Elijah know what I said. Elijah doesn’t look happy about me saying no, but George is quick to shut down his attitude.
When we are all in the jeep, I drive home and give the boys instructions to help bring things inside as I bring Amelia inside and bring her to take a shower. I learned the first week that she lived with me that she didn’t like taking baths and preferred to take showers so I allowed to her to do that. I stay near the bathroom, in case she needs something. We have come up with that if she is in the shower and she needs something that she will knock 3 times on the shower wall and I’ll go in to see what she needs.
After her shower, I bring her to bed and I help her climb in. We have a conversation about how the day went and how much she enjoyed hanging out with the family and wants to do it again. I told her that we will be doing it again for sure and then I told her it was time to go to sleep because tomorrow we had to go to the stores and do some shopping. She put her head on the pillow and I rubbed her back as she fell asleep and once she was asleep, I went downstairs to see Johnathan and Joshua looking at me…
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Joshua’s POV
When it was lunch time and Amelia was giving dad a hard time, I expected him to bring her to the family bathroom to spank her, but to my surprise he didn’t. I know that if it were Katrina, Johnathan, or me that what would have happened, but Amelia simply was made to sit on the bench for 5 minutes. Johnathan and I thought that dad decided that he would wait until we got home to give her a spanking, but when we hear the shower turn on and then turn off and heard no spanking, Johnathan and I looked at each other in disbelief
“Is dad really not spanking her for the way she behaved today?” I asked Johnathan.
“I guess not, but she also didn’t do anything that bad, I mean yeah she ran away from him and didn’t obey what he said but she is also new to the family and maybe he was just giving her a warning of what would happen next time. I mean we grew up with him and know what is expected, Amelia just came into the family not too long ago,” Johnathan tried to reason with me, but I wasn’t having it.
“It’s not fair, she should be punished the same way we would have been punished if we acted like that,” I exclaimed.
After I said that, we hear dad coming down the stairs and we look at him, me with the ‘what the fuck’ look and Johnathan with ‘he has an attitude and I just want to get the hell out of here’ look.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asks.
“Oh nothing, we were just talking about how if we disobeyed you like Amelia did at the park you would have brought us to the family bathroom and would have spanked us, but Amelia only had to sit on the bench for 5 minutes. That just didn’t seem fair and I thought that maybe you decided to spank her when we got home, but I didn’t hear any spanking before or after her shower, so I am assuming that it never happened. Are you playing favorites with a daughter that just barely became part of the family?” I ask, bitterly.
“I needed to talk to you two about Amelia and punishments. I was going to wait until tomorrow since I think we are all pretty tired, but if you want to have the conversation now, we can” Dad says calmly.
“What is there to talk about?” I ask, a bit rudely.
“First of all, before we start talking, I want you to change your attitude and lose the disrespect. I won’t tolerate it, and you know it,” he says with an eyebrow raised. When I don’t say anything else, he continues “I wanted to talk with you two about how I am going to punish Amelia, at least for a bit until things with her trauma gets better. I’m not going to be spanking her but she will be getting timeouts and privileges taken away, like no T.V. and no tablet time. She will still have consequences for her behavior but they will be different from what punishments you two receive,” Dad says.
“Why are we still going to get spanked if she isn’t going to get spanked, that’s not fair!” I raise my voice a bit as I get frustrated at the fact that my dad is deciding he is treating one child differently than his others.
“First of all, watch the attitude, last warning. Second, Amelia has trauma that she needs to work through before I can give her any physical punishments, you kids grew up with physical corporal punishment, you know what is expected and what the consequences are for not following the rules,” Dad says.
I sigh, I know that he is right, I just don’t think it is fair. I don’t want to get spanked if my sister isn’t going to get spanked.
“So we are still going to get spanked but Amelia isn’t going to be? What about at school, when we get in trouble at school, we get sent to the principal's office and we get paddled, does that mean that Amelia isn't going to get spanked there either?” I asked, not with as much attitude as before.
