Smiling Mom

Sounds like a joke, right?  Click on this link and lis­ten to the most hila­rious recor­ded phone call I’ve heard in a long time!

Enjoy!

Often while I’m at work I get photo upda­tes of the kids day, thanks to Hubby’s favo­rite toy.

Today was no excep­tion.  BC has been fee­ling pretty sick this week.  We’ve spent every day, since Mon­day, near a toi­let.  Hubby said that BC had the flu.  I didn’t believe him.  Aside from the inces­sant runs, BC see­med fine.

Until today.

First I got this photo sent to me just before 8:00 A.M.  BC slee­ping any­time besi­des after 7:30 P.M. is abso­lu­tely unheard of.  This was not a good sign.

Then I got a text.

eClaire has the runs.  BC does too.

Crap.

eClaire clearly caught what BC has.

Then I got this photo.

It was deci­ded that the kids would have a “Movie in Paja­mas Day”.

Unfor­tu­na­tely that pic­ture was shortly follo­wed by the follo­wing text.

BC threw up all over the bed and him­self.  Now he’s thro­wing up in the toi­let.  AND eClaire is on the other toi­let with the runs.

Need­less to say, it was a rough day here.  None of us really smi­led much today. BC’s never expe­rien­ced thro­wing up before.  It frea­ked him the eff out.  Seriously.  I gua­ran­tee he will remem­ber today for the rest of his life.

Hubby was an angel.  There was mini­mal com­plai­ning, loads and loads of laundry, two baths each, and a clean house by the time I got home.

Angel.  He ear­ned a place in bed with me tonight!  Hehe    Thank good­ness it’s a king sized bed though… neither one of us wants to risk breathing on the other for fear of pas­sing the plague!

Cros­sing my fin­gers for two healthier kids by mor­ning… hoping, but not expecting.

Recently Miche­lle and I had a play-date at a local park.  Since neither of us could find a baby­sit­ter, we deci­ded to let our chil­dren tag along. Heh!

The con­ver­sa­tion quickly tur­ned to our all things kid inc­lu­ding tan­trums and nego­tia­ting.  The big ques­tion that we kept coming back to was, “How much nego­tia­ting is too much?”  If I ask my four year old to put away his socks, for the fourth time, and he tells me to wait because he’s hel­ping his sis­ter put on her dolly’s clothes, should I wait?  He’s got a point, he’s doing something to help out his sister.

If I say it’s time to to turn off the movie and he tells me he will when the scene is over, is that ok?

Rai­sing a four year old is so dif­fe­rent than rai­sing a youn­ger child.  Not all con­ver­sa­tions are as black and white.  You now have to deal with a thin­king, TALKING, nego­tia­ting little person.

My ans­wer to the ques­tion, “How much nego­tia­ting is too much?” came at the tur­ning point of BC’s tan­trum phase.  My dad was in town and knew my hus­band and I were at a loss as to what to do with our son’s beha­vior.  We thought we were paren­ting pretty con­sis­tently.  But I have to say that having a fresh set of eyes in our house for three days, watching all our paren­ting moves was a true bles­sing.  He was able to see just where the break­down in our stra­te­gies occurred.

One scene that he obser­ved went something like this:

Me: BC turn off the com­pu­ter.  I war­ned that if you hit your sis­ter again, you’d be done with the game.

BC: (Intense stare, not budging)

Me: If you don’t turn off the com­pu­ter, then I will.

BC (Intense stare, heals dig­ging into floor)

Me: (Wal­king over to com­pu­ter, shut­ting off the game)

BC: (Sta­ying put at the desk, not bud­ging or compl­ying.  Just not pla­ying the game.)

During this whole event, I did all the work.  First I told my son to turn off the com­pu­ter, then rea­li­zing that he wasn’t bud­ging and fea­ring an all out war, I chan­ged my strategy.

Essen­tially what I did was create uncer­tainty.  My son could not pre­dict with 100% accu­racy the of out­come of his actions, so he rolled the dice, and won.

My beha­vior and actions were crea­ting his sub-par behavior.

As my father and I were tal­king he brought up this exam­ple to me.

As a teacher I go along my day with my stu­dents, just as happy as can be.  The stu­dents have choi­ces and I allow them a lot of lee­way, as long as they are on task.  But the minute they diso­bey, fall off task, or step over the accep­ta­ble line, all nego­tia­tion and addi­tio­nal pri­vi­le­ges stop.  They must head back to their desks.  Period.

Why was I not appl­ying these stra­te­gies to my own parenting?

Ulti­ma­tely, I knew the answer.

Fear.

I had given my power to the four year old tyrant living in my home.

It was at this moment when I said to myself, “This is not a democ­racy.  What I say goes, or there will be consequences.”

The next time my son told me no, he would not follow my direc­tions, I wal­ked over to him, got eye level and said with the most serious voice and facial expres­sion I could mus­ter, “You WILL follow my direc­tions, or you WILL go to time out.”  And I sta­red.  I did not break eye contact.

He rea­li­zed the shift in my paren­ting, and reluc­tantly complied.

Not only did this shift all but end the tan­trums.  But kno­wing the con­se­quen­ces to his actions with 100% cer­tainty also, ama­zingly enough, allo­wed my son to breathe again.  It was like he was a new kid again.  The smile retur­ned to his face and his happy atmosphere retur­ned to our house.

Kids crave boun­da­ries.  A lack of boun­da­ries crea­tes uncer­tainty.  Uncer­tainty crea­tes con­fu­sion.  Con­fu­sion crea­tes fear.  Fear crea­tes an unsafe fee­ling.  Kids who feel unsafe act out.  Acting out crea­tes tan­trums.  Tan­trums are HELL for parents!!

My son and daugh­ter have mul­ti­ple choi­ces throughout the day.  They choose their clothes, what they want for break­fast, and where and how they play, just to name a few.  But the one thing they no lon­ger choose is when and how they to pay atten­tion to our rules.

In times of dis­tress, our house is not a democ­racy.  It’s a dictatorship.

I can’t believe that I’ve been gone for a week from my blog.  I’m in the midst of trying to finish some big wri­ting pro­jects for my Master’s clas­ses, so I’m fee­ling a bit distracted.

I recently recei­ved a fan­tas­tic for­war­ded pic­ture.  Today, I’ll share it with you.

As a remin­der, you should always check you child’s home­work.  The image is inten­ded to show a mom who works at Home Depot selling sho­vels. This is an actual child’s dra­wing.