I Hate Hitting

My youngest son has a new dirty habit: hitting. And here’s the fun part – I’m his only victim. When he gets mad, really mad he lashes out. I’ve found it’s the small things that set him off:

• Don’t let him hang out in the arcade at the movie theater
• Didn’t give him food fast enough when he asked for it
• Refused to read a third book at bedtime
• Won’t allow him to stay home alone instead of going to preschool
• Made him put his shirt away

Any one of these infractions could (and have) lead to hitting, slapping and/or choking. And yet, again, it’s only me he does this to. Apparently this is a fairly common problem for moms out there – enough so that I found a variety of websites offering advice – everything from, “help her understand why she is getting angry” to “notice when your child is doing something positive, and reward the good behavior” to “look for patterns.”

Most of these sites talk about ways to prevent temper tantrums and/or hitting – but few actually give you a play by-play of what you should do during the actual act of violence. I think I need something more like “karate for kindergarten moms” or something like that. Although, I must say I did find some nuggets of advice on dealing with an actual attack – primarily, take them to timeout or lower your voice (reminds me of that meme about whispering to your child and how much scarier that is than yelling at them.)

Do your kids hit you? How did you get the abuse to stop?

Who Asked You?! The Woes of Unsolicited Parenting Advice

We’ve all been there. You watch a parent struggling with their unruly kid and you think, “Oh man, you are doing that wrong.” But, at what point should you actually open your mouth and say something, especially if it’s a friend?

A friend recently asked me that question. A friend of her’s asked – openly – what he should do differently to tame his “little monster.”

Friends gave the typical advice:

• Watch Super Nanny
• Read “The Strong Willed Child”
• Use reward charts
• Be consistent

It was that last piece of advice that seems to be the sticking point with this particular parent. It is apparent that this parent is not sticking to his guns. So, my friend asks, should she be blunt with him and tell him that in order to get his kid to listen and behave, he’s going to have to put more effort in, too?

Luckily, I have some pretty too-the-point blunt brutally-honest friends. One caught me in the act once. I was complaining about how my kids just don’t listen when it’s time to leave. She said, “Well, let’s see… you’ve told them five times that it’s time to go and yet, here you stand, talking to me. If it’s time to go, it’s time to go. YOU need to set the stage and be consistent.” It was a tough thing to hear, but I needed to hear it.

What do you think? When should you speak up and give the parenting advice you know your friends really need to hear?

Oh, what a night…

Now that I have that song stuck in your head…

My evening with my children was… interesting… to say the least. The first day back to our house after spending time over at their dad’s is always a rough transition – as I imagine it as when they go back to his house after being at our home. Last night was no different.

All three kids wanted to watch a movie. We try to limit screen time, so they asked, instead, if we could play a game. Everyone was fine with this – except my three-year old. My refusal to let him watch a movie combined with my refusal to let him have a second juice box was just too much for him to take. He laid down on the ground – kicking, screaming, banging his fists and shouting into the floorboards, “I HATE MOMMY!” Oh joy. Those are always the words a mom/dad wants to hear. Gee, thanks.

I picked his flailing little body up and carried him to his room, fists and feet a flying. I told him he was being nasty and shut the door, telling him he could come out when he could calm himself down and apologize. Fast forward through a lot more screaming and sobbing… and he tells me he’s sorry for saying he hates me. Over juice.

My 10-year-old daughter, meanwhile, gets reprimanded for sneaking food off her plate – after being told, repeatedly, to wait. My seven-year old son then polished off the night by asking me if I was around when Noah’s Ark was built.

So.. how was your evening?

The Wrong Side of the Bed

Hmm. Where to start? Well, let me back in to this by saying we are moving. Staying in the same community, just downsizing – drastically.

My boys will be sharing a room (which they already do.) We were concerned their new bedroom wouldn’t be big enough to fit my seven-year old’s race car bed. I insisted we find a way to make it fit. My son loves that bed! (Insert that time as a mom where you’re the one who’s actually more attached something than the child you are fretting over is.)

My first grader says to me, matter of factly, “Mom, when we get a new house, I’d like a new bed. I think I’m too old for this one and I feel like bunk beds would be a good choice.” I was astounded. First of all, he was very articulate in his statement. It was well thought out and he’d obviously been considering this for a while. Secondly, bunk beds? That’s what we were going to try to appease him with if we couldn’t take the race car bed with us! And finally, he’s “too old” for his race car bed? Say what?! But, but… I guess we’ll be saying  goodbye to the old red bed.

While all this has been going down, his little brother, our youngest, wants to be just like his big brother. He has decided he no longer wants to sleep in his little bed either. (We’ve been using the convertible crib with the one side removed…) He has taken to sleeping in the race car bed or the other twin mattress. This is great and all (although, it was doubly crushing for both my baby boys to decide to grow up on me so fast!) except for the fact that my toddler has woken up on the wrong side of the bed each and every day he’s slept on a different bed.

Each morning, my three-year old has been a sheer terror. Three times this week – he has screamed. All. The. Way. To. Preschool.People, this is NOT a short drive.  He insists he’s a big boy and should be able to go to school with his big brother and sister. By the time we drop them off and reach the preschool – he’s in full-on meltdown mode. He rotates between the “stiff as a board” and “wet noodle” approaches in his car seat, making it virtually impossible to remove him from the car without looking like a wild woman. Once we reach the top step of the preschool, I’m working up my best tactic to get him to settle down.

This morning, another parent caught me showing my boy his face in the mirror and telling him, “This is a grumpy boy. Where’s my happy boy?” The dad walked past and said, “Yeah, let me know if that works – I have two you can try it on.”

Why must toddlers want what they want when they want it? I’m hoping/praying tomorrow will bring significantly less drama, especially considering it’s a weekend!

Anyone out there with some toddler-taming-tips?

 

Soap, Anyone?

Yesterday, I wrote about my daughter calling her younger brother an, “old bitch.”

And here I was thinking that was the topper to my day. Nope.

After work, I picked my youngest up from preschool. We headed to the store to buy a gift for a birthday party we were headed to. He proceeded to go limp in the entry of the store – angry that I would not let him ride the coin-operated truck in the entrance. (Evil, non-children-having people put those there, by the way. The same people who put candy and small toys at the checkout line.)

As he worked his “Civil Disobedience” tactics, laying prone on the floor like a 40 pound sack of jello, I began receiving the looks. Other customers attempted to walk past me and my writhing child as I scolded him for his inappropriate behavior. I only tell you this detail, so you can fully understand my evening better.

Once we made it to the birthday party (which we nearly did not go to after that ugly display – he did say sorry, though) my three-year old boy sat in my lap, quietly enjoying the birthday party – preparing for pizza and cake and all the birthday fun. Then, while all the other parents and friends had gathered around – he, very clearly, said at the top of his lungs, “BITCH! BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH.” He said this all with a smile on his face.

If you have any spare bars of soap floating around your house, send them my way. We’ve got a bad-word habit to break.

What’s the worst word your kiddo has said in a public place?

Quick Question

What do you do when…

Your 10-year-old daughter calls your seven-year old son an, “old bitch”?

(She then followed up by saying she actually said, “you’re mean.” Um, not quite.)

 

Are You THAT Mom?

I witnessed some pretty harsh child-on-child violence the other day. Even more surprising was the setting: Church.

The brother and sister – each about eight or nine years old – were fighting over who knows what. That’s not really important. If you have kids, you know kids will fight over just about anything. If you don’t have kids – geez, thanks for reading my blog anyway. (Sorry about all the poop stories.)

So, here they were, in the heat of it. He’s saying something she doesn’t like. She’s saying something he doesn’t like. He says something she really doesn’t like and she winds up – cranking her arm – fully stretched – as far as it will go backward – and slaps him. HARD. In the face. God love that boy, while he didn’t quite turn the other cheek, he didn’t hit her back. In fact, he didn’t do much of anything. He stood there, clutching his now very red cheek and stared back at her in disbelief. That’s when reality struck her.

“OH! I didn’t mean to do that!” She blurted out at him.

I stood there – watching. Waiting. When no one came swooping in to act – I chose to be: THAT MOM.

My own mother is pretty notorious for scooping up and reprimanding small children in the church I grew up in. But, since I’m pretty new to the church I now attend, I decided not to go all out on this kid. I walked over to her and she gazed up in me in panic mode.

“Lets go find your mother,” I said calmly to her.

“NO! It was an accident!” she pleaded with me.

I wasn’t about to call some kid I don’t know a liar, so I replied, “I’m not sure that’s accurate.” Then, we went to find her mom. The girl took off running toward her mom – anxious to have the first word. I saw her mom’s face take the shock. I walked up and said, “I just wanted to make sure you knew what happened,” and walked away.

Tell me – what would you have done? Do you become THAT MOM and go narc a kid out? Do you yell at the kid yourself? Do you ignore it completely? How do you handle these scenarios?

 

Emotional Warfare and Other Soda-Related Evils

Let me start by saying – this all started with a soda.

My ten-year old daughter has a big report due tomorrow. Knowing I didn’t have time to cook, help her and tend to the other two kids – I decided to buy a pizza for dinner. I decided to treat the kids with a soda. I bought one 20 ounce Sierra Mist. My toddler was the only child with me when I made the purchase. He proceeded to scream the entire way home, demanding soda, “RIGHT NOW!” I explained he needed to stop whining or he wouldn’t get any soda… at all. He managed to survive the ride home.

When we got home, my seven-year old son, realizing I’d only purchased one 20 ounce bottle, hollered, “WHAT? Only one SMALL one?!” I told him he should be grateful for what he was being given and that soda was a treat – a treat he would not get if he didn’t behave.

I poured all three children a small cup of soda and went downstairs to set down my coat and purse. In the seconds it took me to accomplish that task, the two oldest children had already begun fighting. My ten-year old daughter was crying, saying something about her seven-year old brother saying he hated her. He claimed she did something to him, yada yada… he said, she said. I walked to the table, picked up both their glasses and dumped them out in the sink.

This small act on my part was met with the child-size equivalent of civil war. My son tore his glasses off his face, crumpling his homework in a ball. My daughter stormed off to her room. My toddler guzzled his cup of soda – the only one not taken away.  

Minutes later, as my first grader and I were having a long talk about acceptable behavior, my daughter appeared with a piece of paper. She threw it down in a huff and returned, dramatically, to her room. This is what she left for me.

Let me again say, this entire event began over a single, 20 ounce bottle of soda.

She returned a few minutes later with another piece of paper. This one asked me to “check yes or no” if I hated her. She left it in the same dramatic fashion. When there was no response on my part within her designated amount of time – she came back again. This time she asked if I had read her letters. I said, “Yes. I don’t respond to emotional blackmail.” She said, “Oh, okay then.” She then completely changed course, told me she loved me and sat at the table like the most pleasant fourth grader you’ve ever met. WHAT THE… ???

I’ve learned a few important things tonight:

Soda will not return to my home.

My kids really need a refresher course on what is acceptable behavior.

If this is what the tween years hold… I should start preparing now for life with a teenager.

Mama’s Grumpy

What’s that expression, “When Mama’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy!”

Yeah… that pretty much sums up my entire weekend. I was in a mood. And no one was safe from my big, bad case of the grumps. The kids were… to say the least… not listening well. I’d had enough of repeating myself. And the kids knew it.

Around the time I put my toddler in time-out, they finally caught on that I was not pleased with their lack of listening skills, and they started trying to make up for their offenses.

My daughter came over to me and started rubbing my shoulders. She said, “Mama, don’t be stressed.” Then, my seven-year old son walked up with a butterfly he’d cut out of construction paper. He handed it to me saying, “Here’s something pretty for you to hold on to when you’re in a bad mood.” Yeah, apparently, I, occasionally, get in bad moods. When knew?

After a brief talking to with myself (and some Advil) I concluded I was being a total grump. What do you do when you get a case of the grumps?

Sick of Lying

Argh! Can we have a do-over to start my day? Please?

My kindergartener was sick yesterday after school. The sitter called and said he was not feeling well at all. Grandma picked him up and by the time I got home, all was well again. Apparently, he just needed to poop.

This morning, I walked to his room to wake him up. He wasn’t there. I could hear the cartoons from the living room TV upstairs. We don’t do TV during the week and hardly on the weekends. “Hey!” I called up, “You need to get ready for school. Shut the TV off.”

“What? No. It’s the weekend!” he replied.

“No, it’s Friday. You have school!”

“NO, I don’t. It’s the weekend!”

This went on for a while until I walked upstairs and shut the TV off and told him he’d better get ready or we’d be late. And there began the morning… The Morning of the Lies.

“I don’t feeeeeeeeeeeeel good!” he began to cry, out of nowhere, in the shrill whiny voice that makes every parent cringe. (Non-parents may mistake this whine as actual crying or a sign of a serious illness. This, however, is a rookie mistake. This kind of cry is easily detected by a parent who instantly recognizes it as what it is: A LIE.)

At this point, you may start thinking, “Oh, but he went home sick yesterday. Maybe he really doesn’t feel good!” Well, I have a solution for this. My lie detector test is my right hand. If, while the child is crying, I lift my hand to tickle them and they bust up laughing, they are NOT sick. When they are actually sick, they might smile a little sad smile and say something like, “please, mommy, no tickles. I don’t feel good.” But, no. Today, it was all laughs before resuming the shrill, “I don’t feeeeeel good!”

The line was repeated, over and over again. I went through the usual, “Do you really not feel good or do you want some attention?” Normally, he says he just wants some attention and we’ll play a game or something. Not this time. This time, he just wanted to stay in his pajamas and watch cartoons all day.

We went round and round all morning, including an actual slamming on the brakes in the driveway (flashback to childhood: “I will pull this car over!”) He changed his tune shortly after that and we were okay again. Until… I went to drop him off at the sitter’s. “I don’t want to go. I don’t feel good!” began again.

After finally getting him out of the car, I found myself fuming over this on the drive to work. Why must kids lie like that? How do you get them to just tell you the truth? And why is it that my kids pull this stuff when I know, full well, that if I would have tried this when I was a kid, I would’ve gotten a spanking. Are spankings the solution? Nasty flavored “medicine”? (My parents used to make me take Chloraseptic spray. Yuck! That really determined if I was sick or not…To be fair, the Chloraseptic folks seem to have come up with some less-nasty stuff these days…) What do you do? How do you get your child to understand that crying wolf and saying they are sick all the time is really a form of lying?

 

Or is this the way of my future?