1) Moving house - never blogged about this, but when we moved house, my goodness did I surprise myself by how coercive I could actually be!
2) Having babies - ok, every mother knows what ‘cabin fever’ is like, and knows the desperation to get out of the house after a few days of enforced staying at home. So how exactly does one go about this when your oldest child digs her heels in and steadfastly refuses to go? How do you control your temper when what you need to help you control it is to get OUTSIDE in the fresh air? Talk about flipping Catch-22! The other day I found myself staying in with Flopsy and Cotton-tail while Mum and Dad took Mopsy to the swings because, despite the fact that Flopsy loves the swings, she decided to be a little Madam and refuse to go for a wee first (we *always* have to traipse back with her ten minutes after arriving at the swings so she can go to the loo!). So, following her example, I cut my own nose off to spite my face and said ‘fine, we won’t go to the swings at all then’. How stupid of me! I should have just forced her in the first place as I then spent the next fifteen minutes in uncontrollable tears, feeling absolutely furious with her and myself, to the extent that we had a blazing row and I ended up saying “I simply have got to get out, Flopsy, so if you won’t come with me I’ll leave you here alone” - cue desperate screaming from Flopsy, and desperate guilt from myself for even thinking about saying such a thing, let alone letting it come out of my mouth! Of course, it did the trick - she rushed to get ready so she wouldn’t be left here alone (DISCLAIMER: I would never, ever leave a child of mine alone in the house - this was an empty threat made in a desperately hormonal angry state!). We then walked to the swings very happily, one minute down the road Flopsy says: “I’m happy now, Mummy”. Aaaarrrggghhhh!!! What do you do when, not only do you, as a stressed out mother, *need* to get out, but you *know* that your child will have a lovely time once they get there and that they’re only refusing because they’re being stubborn and once they’ve made a decision not to co-operate, they can’t possibly lose face by backing down??? TCS’ers…any ideas? Anything at all to prevent us getting to this desperate state again, particularly when it’s about something so seemingly unimportant - just a bit of flipping fresh air!? I really could do with some help with this issue, as Flopsy seems to have made a bit of a habit about refusing to get ready to go out, even to places she really wants to go to - I’m sure that how I’ve dealt with it has something to do with her behaviour, but how do I turn it around? I *hate* forcing her to do things!
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
-
Regular reads
Websites of interest
- 1 currently online
- 4 maximum concurrent
- 78186 total visitors
9:42 pm
wouldn’t at all consider myself a TCSer, but I do know what you mean - personally I think there are times when you have to say ‘actually I know best about this, you might not like the process but I know you will like the outcome’.
I have found that my children respond well to knowing a plan for the day though, or to having time warnings - ie ‘I want us all to go out to the park this afternoon because I think we need some fresh air, shall we agree a time when we’ll go?’, thus giving them some control over the event but no negotiation over the actual event itself - does that make sense? I often put the kitchen timer on and say ‘this needs to happen by the time the pinger pings’, or ‘when the pinger goes you need to get out of the bath (or whatever!)’, which again gets rid of the confrontation at the time of the event (hopefully!).
Doesn’t always work easily like that but that might help a little bit?
12:22 am
I remember the time when Leo was new born as being characterised by LOTS of obstructive behaviour from Pearl. Just when everything was most difficult to get sorted she would do things like refuse to go for a wee before leaving the house, suddenly decide we had gone the ‘wrong way’, refuse to leave where we were… I don’t have any magic answers but I think I probably did way too much locking horns. Hormones are so powerful and it is really tough for everyone when a new family member appears. Distraction was always my best bet when they were little - ‘let’s go out and see if we can find a squirrel/cat/other favourite thing’ - but sometimes you can’t do that when you are tired or overcome with raging hormones. Slowly, over time, I’ve got better at just walking away whenever I can and in situations like refusing wees or coats I just go out anyway. When P was little I perfected the art of the ‘dangle wee’ - holding P over gutters and drains. I still find myself carrying coats ‘just in case’.
Good luck with it all and give yourself permission to lose it sometimes - I think that it is unavoidable.
12:47 am
I would like to second Allie’s concern that you give yourself permission to lose it once in a while. All moms of young children horrify themselves with what comes out of their mouths at least once in a while. Moms practicing gentle ways of getting along with kids can go a little black and white with it: we skip right to horrible black from our usual dreamy white, rather than being grayish, normal, “kindly coercive” parents all the time.
I am not a NCPer but I have been reading on it and edging myself in that direction. Did you try making a trade with your little one? “I’ll try some of your homemade ‘mystery soup’ if you’ll try some of my matzo ball soup?”