As you’ve been watching in pictures and other fun things, my life has been hectic. Since my depressive episode over the summer, I’ve been trying to destress, relax, talk calmly with the girls. You know, the impossible.
Last night was crazy. I stayed calm through it all, but it was hard.
Soleil left her after school care in a foul mood. The foulest I have seen her in a long time. It took several minutes to get her in the car. Then to get her to sit instead of turning around and pouting out the back window.
Turns out she had a fight with another girl about the game of Sorry. A huge fight. And instead of dealing, she got mad and the teacher put the game away and she broke her favorite (du jour) bead bracelet. And Jay tried to pick up all of the beads, but missed ONE sparkly purple one. This is important later. We got her home and she rushed into her room, hiding under her covers. I calmly followed, asked permission to come up. She grunted and I took that as approval. Much screaming and kicking of the wall ensued as she described her problem. Then she needed to put her bracelet together (BUT DADDY WON’T LET ME!!!!!!) I got the beads from Jay and found that she had moved to under my bed. I put the beads on the carpet and walked away to check on Luna (who was in a pissing match with Jay. Lovely). When I came back, Soleil has sorted all of the beads under the bed and was screaming again. Apparently, she was missing 1 bead. The sparkly purple one. Mom, being the most awesome mother on the planet, found our bead collection and pulled out 5 beads…all the same size and all sparkly, and all the wrong shade of purple. She was now hiding under her sister’s bed (they have a bunk and she gets the top). Sigh. I offered her three solutions. 1- she could wait until she got the purple sparkle bead from after school, 2- she could just use what she had (NO! IT RUINS MY PATTERN!!!!) , or 3- use these two sparkle beads that are a different shade but really really close (NO! IT HAS TO BE PERFECT!).
The final decision was to package it all up and wait for the next time she was at after school. Sigh. 10 more minutes and she let me carry her into the dining room for dinner. Whew!
Why do they not offer small owner’s manuals? Things that describe exactly what to do when you child becomes COMPLETELY PSYCHOTIC! I used to think it was just my kids, but now I know it is all kids.
How do you handle these things? I wanted to throw things (and small children) into walls but I didn’t. I stayed calm.
I admire you for staying calm. I often fail at that and start yelling which makes everything far worse.
I have looked for the missing manual so many times. Can’t find one. And have no clue how to get the girls to respond to calm reasoning…
Not much help, but I guess I’m saying “you’re not alone”…
I too will say that you aren’t alone. You know how I struggle with this. One of my goals for 2009 is to yell less. I thought about that after I yelled at Grace after we got home from daycare tonight.
I’m sorry that I don’t have any answers. (((HUGS)))
Good job Nance for keeping your cool. In most occasion like this, I am the one who is screaming at the kids and hiding under the blanket.
Hang in there – email me and you and I can share more horror stories together.
It can be very frustrating. And I think you did super!
When I start to get that feeling that no other solution is going to do (it just has to be EXACTLY what they want, which is impossible to do at that moment) I just quit trying to problem solve and switch to empathy (I find for DD it’s not really about the THING she wants but more about just generally needing to VENT)….but now that DD is older the empathy lasts only so long. I won’t sit and listen to screaming and kicking walls (mine does that too sometimes) so I calmly tell her she is free to “get it all out” in her room if she needs, but I’ll be heading out and will come back later.
Most times she decides to put a lid on it and have me stay. The good part of this is that every now and then she takes herself off to her bedroom to “let it all out”, lol.