Day One of summer was tough but my strategy paid off. Totally different children for Day Two.
Day One
Day Two
I credit working on my other rocks: my time with God in the morning, getting to bed at
a decent time, and cutting out sugar for my ability to stay calm and carry
on.Gotta take care of myself first before I can help my kids.
My Facebook status for the first day
of summer vacation was this:
Day one
of summer vacation and my son is screaming and flopping on the floor, "I
don't like the rule that we have to pick up our stuff before we can go
somewhere!!!!" You should have seen him flipping out because his sister is
singing. Oh boy, hopefully we can bootcamp him into the summer routine or else
it's going to be a looooong one
I could tell by a couple of the responses I
got that some people are far removed from my reality. I’ve mentioned before that my son has
issues. I don’t say that lightly. He isn’t
like your average kid so I can’t discipline him like the average kid.
I realize that posting about my kids’
meltdowns may give people the wrong impression.
They are good kids 90% of the time (Well, one is 99% and the other is
80%) and I think the meltdowns make for funny stories. I tried crying about
them but that didn’t work so now I try to laugh at them.
Today I
want to show the flipside of the meltdowns.
There’s always more to the meltdown stories but it doesn’t make for a
funny ending, more like an “Oh, she’s just bragging about what a perfect parent
she is” ending. And we all know, a
perfect parent is not how I see myself.
You see, I don’t just let my kids have
their fits and walk away. It may look like
I’m letting them get away with it in the short run by not getting them to stop
right away. This is where all that money spent on parenting classes,
psychologists, and books for dealing with my son's Encopresis pays off. Love and Logic tells you that the only thing
you can control is your
behavior. I can smack a crying kid or
tell them, “Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!” I’ve found that it doesn’t work on my kids which makes
sense, if I’m upset and crying would I calm down if someone hit me or yelled at
me? Nope. Plus they are so drunk on
emotion at that point that they can’t be reasoned with. Kevin Leman’s book Have a New Kid by Friday teaches that the lesson sinks in better
when you wait and deal out the consequences when it really hits home. My dad taught the biggest part of the
solution which is, follow through. I don’t let them win in the long run. I know their currency and I use it as a carrot. The people who watched and listened as my
daughter had a never-been-done-before HUMONGOUS fit at Target and rolled their
eyes at my “lack of parenting” (because if I were a good parent, she wouldn’t
be having this fit? She's a kid) they missed the ending where after she finally calmed
down, she walked back in the store to the aisle on which she left the toys out
and calmly put them back in place. She then walked to the cashier and
apologized for her behavior.
They missed that this turned into a Never-To-Be-Done-Again fit when the next day on another trip to Target, Boo
said to me, “Mama, I’ll never have a fit like that again. It didn’t work.” We ended up at the cash register just one
aisle over from the day before and she said, “Oh, that’s aisle 10 where we were
yesterday.” She remembered the aisle number? I wouldn’t have been able to tell
you that. I told the cashier that Boo
was remembering the five alarm meltdown she had had the day before. The cashier asked, “What time was that?”
Around 4:30. “Oh, I was here for that.” Who would forget that? She took out a sticker and gave it to Boo
saying, “Good job for behaving so well today.”
Hello people!! Do you think Boo learned her
lesson? Just because the other people
saw a snapshot of my life, they don’t know the whole story.
So, this brings me to our first day of
summer vacation. Yesterday was
miserable. Fighting new rules, bickering with each other, acting like married
people who have been home together for too long. My son had to put his Legos back in the box
three different times because I was making him clean-up before we could move on
to something else. He fought it every time. While he’s flopping on the floor,
do I grab him and yell, “You better pick those up right now or they’re gone!!!” No, because he’s too drunk on emotion. I tell him that if he wants to go to Target
to get his friend’s birthday present for the next day’s party, he has to get
the Legos put away. And I walk out of
the room (that’s called not engaging. Pay attention, I just saved you $50 of
psychologist fees.) Each time he didn’t want to do something, I pointed out
that he was stuck until he did what I said.
So, this morning he came into my room and
asked, “What chores do I have to do before I can play video games?” When I told him we were doing laundry before
playing, his response was not a flop on the floor with
screaming. He answered, “Yes ma’am.” Throughout the whole process of separating,
folding, learning how to fold the towels properly (his wife can thank me later),
and putting everything away, I only heard positive things coming from this boy.
He was so proud when he was done that I took a picture of him standing proudly
next to his folded clothes.
Yesterday, my son learned that GI Jane is
here to stay and she is calm and in control.
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