Anger management
I know I've said that I'll throw a party when Mabel's last tooth* comes through, but in a way I'm a bit apprehensive about it. Because once that happens, I won't have anything left to blame her shocking behaviour on, and I might just have to accept that she's a terrible, horrible, no-good child.
This morning, for example, in between my taking the old pull-up off her and putting on the new one, she ran off (par for the course) and I found her standing almost on the shaggy rug in the front room, peeing on the floor. I went to pull the chair out of the way so I could yank her all the way off the rug, but it appeared that Monkey had just tied the chair to the coffee table with some IKEA string, so I couldn't even manage that. They conspire against me, you know. (B too. I'm sure he was the one who procured the string.)
To be fair to her, while she can certainly poo in the toilet if she feels like it (key point there), I don't think she can really control the wee yet. But she could have done a better job of looking sorry about it: instead she laughed uproariously and thought the whole thing was hilarious. And it's not as if I was putting on my crossness about this and trying to hide a laugh myself - I was genuinely annoyed, and she hadn't even the common decency to look remorseful.
This evening I had her in a special-event unscheduled bath while Monkey was at soccer practice, thanks to a lot of ice-cream** drips and climbing a tree, and I was just taking the opportunity to clean the bathroom a bit when she dumped a jugful of water over the side. I was so annoyed that I grabbed the jug and retaliated by giving her hair a quick dousing before taking her out of the bath. My (possibly after-the-fact) justification was that she needed a hair-washing, or at least wetting, and I needed to get her out as quickly as possible as punishment for the water over the side. But really, I was just angry and knew she'd hate it. Which she did, loudly.
It is perhaps the case that my daughter and I will have a clash of tempers once or twice or daily in our relationship, as she gets older. I maybe need to get hold of myself and remember that I'm the adult in this situation.
What do you think? Was it a contravention of gentle parenting? Did I act vengefully out of temper? Did she deserve what she got? Or is it, in the scheme of things, a mere blip? All of the above?
Or maybe, once the last tooth comes through, this will all be in the past and we'll metaphorically frolic through the daisies together ever after. You think?
* I should clarify that I'm never sure whether she's teething or not, but sometimes she just darn acts like it. I don't want to dose her up when she says plainly "No, my teeth don't hurt," but I do wonder if she's just not recognising the pain for what it is.
**We got the ice-cream at IKEA, where, as suggested, I asked to see the ingredients. The nice guy behind the counter happily gave me a folder with the information, which told me that it has "corn syrup" but not "high fructose corn syrup". So that's okay. Maybe. Am not really any wiser, to be honest. But it's still better than the Trix with all its additives and colourings as well as the HFCS. And he only charged me for one because I asked him for two really small ones, so that's got to be good.
posted by Maud @ 8:02 PM
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6 Comments:
Oh dear. Don't worry. Every one of us gets annoyed and parents in a way that we later question from time to time. It doesn't make you a bad mother. Lots of parents do much worse and think it is good parenting.
I think the key is, if you are worried you are doing a good job as a parent, then you probably are. When you're getting out the belt or the kid needs to see a doctor afterwards, then you should worry.
I had a similar parenting moment last night. H, who loves to postpone bedtime with an extra snack and an extra game ad infinitum, was being particularly intransigent about putting his pjs on and in a fit of annoyance I told him that if he didn't do it right away he wasn't getting any bedtime stories. Well, he didn't do it and I didn't feel like I could go back on my ill-thought-out threat, so later we lay together for him to fall asleep and he sobbed about how he wanted stories, and I rubbed his back and felt like THE WORST MOTHER EVER. I mean, who punishes a child by refusing to read to them? What kind of a monster am I? Of course, with a bit of sober reality from talking to Mark afterwards, I realize that I am not a monster and that maybe the thing to do is just try to think a bit before I threaten him next time.
We all just do our best, right?
It was all of the above. I have those moments regularly.
And I don't think she's horrid at all. She is in that unpleasant 2.5-3 range which she'll grow out of about 6 months after she grew into it.
I don't really think she's horrid either, really. It was just the hyperbole talking.
Miranda, I denied her stories (with B and Monkey) the previous night, when she dropped a bath toy in the toilet (on which she was sitting) and then bit me. It still took her two hours to go to sleep and I think B read a story to her at some point in there.
We threaten them with what we think will work. When it doesn't work and we have to carry through, we just have to live with the consequences (or back down). What I feel bad about is providing consequences without warning about them first, but sometimes you can't really give them a second chance. Or yet another second chance.
A mere blip!
I think there's tremendous value in experiencing a parent who's lost their temper and acted out of frustration (excluding bodily harm and abused psyches, of course.) The valuable lesson comes from the apology that comes later -- "I'm sorry I did (insert frustrated reaction here.) Sometimes I get angry and do things I shouldn't, just like you. But I'll try to do better, and you can too." They learn the good from us, the least we can do is teach them to own up to the mistakes. Or perhaps that's just my justification in order to get some guilt-free sleep at night.
Either way, I'm enjoying the blog -- it's almost like we're hanging out.... smile.
oh, I feel for you. At this age, Iris's acting out coincided with Oscar's arrival, so I always put her tantrums down to that, rather than the stage she was in - or that they fueled one another. What worked for us, to break the cycle of seemingly only paying attention to the bad behavior, was to ignore the bad (especially the regression stuff) and lay the praise on ridiculously thick for everything she did that was good. It worked. In a couple of weeks she was back to her usual self (with some relapses, of course) but it really helped me more than anything - to try and cut her some slack. Again, this was tied to new baby in the house, but maybe she's experiencing something like that with the thought that school will be starting for her soon? hang in there.
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