This week I feel like I've been all over the emotional map. I'm excited about my drapes. (They'll be finished later today, if all goes according to plan.) I've been concerned about Big Girl and her eating/anxiety stuff. I've been angry and worried with Little Girl and her willfulness to the point of desperation, and I've been delighted to see some turn around there as well. The play by play would have been too exhausting. So you get the recap.
Big Girl is doing much, much, MUCH better. She has been eating normally since Monday dinner. I found out after school on Monday that she had thrown away her sandwich, and came down hard on that behavior. I don't care if she eats every last bite. I want her to bring it home if she doesn't eat much just so I know she hasn't eaten much. If she were to bring it home, we may throw it away here, but I just need to know what she's eating, especially given the way she wasn't eating hardly at all for a few days there. I think we've got the sandwich issue under control too. She knows there will be consequences if we find out about that happening again.
Little Girl was throwing me for a loop this week. Seemed like screaming was the response to everything, even things that should be fun like riding her tricycle. She was steering it off the sidewalk into grass, and then screaming about it. That's just not fun for anyone. Then from there, she descended into screaming and crying about EVERYTHING, and the "no"s and "I can't"s flowed from there. I was going crazy.
I think it has been my strong will keeping me from turning to the sources I should have been looking toward for at least a year now. I finally obtained a copy of James Dobson's "Strong-Willed Child." My neighbor loaned me hers. I read more than half of it in one night. I read until 11:00 PM or so, then woke up around 3:30 AM thinking about it, finally got up around 4:00 and read some more. (I quit at 6:26, 4 minutes before my alarm goes off!) I realize that my approach has been off somewhat. I've made mistakes. I'm so used to having to think one step ahead of Big Girl with her special needs, I have taken a pass on that with Little Girl. I realize now that I can't do that. I have to be "on" all the time. I need to clearly lay out my expectations with her ahead of time. When we start our trike trek, I need to make it clear that screaming will not be permitted, and then if she screams, I pick up the trike and we walk home. I'm sure she'd scream much more at that point, but at least she's understand why it's happening. And I need to keep my emotions out of it entirely. I'm about as hard to read as large print. She knows when she's getting to me, and she's exploiting that. So things will be different going forward. They have to be.
Even though I had only slept for less than 4 hours, yesterday was a wonderful day with Little Girl. I told her what I expected, and she delivered. It was a good day. I want it to be like that all the time. Even this morning, she has already put her hands on her hips and sassed off a little bit, and I made it clear without getting upset about it that she wasn't going to keep talking to me like that. She shaped up.
Last night, getting the girls ready for bed, brushing teeth, I noticed something on Big Girl that I had never noticed before. She has a permanent tooth coming in right behind her baby tooth, like in a second row. She hasn't yet been to the dentist. Until just recently, we hadn't added the kids to our dental plan (you know, the once a year opportunity for open enrollment), and besides that, I've been terrified to take her. Her first experience will taint how she feels about dentistry from then on. Well, now it's urgent, and I have waited too long. The tooth looks fine, and once the baby tooth is out of the way, I'm sure it will move up where it needs to go. Now I'm worried that the other big teeth won't line up. I guess I shouldn't worry until we see an x-ray. And you know how hard it is to get in to see a dentist. Takes FOREVER!!! I've put a call in this morning, but who knows when they'll call back. Their office hours are only until noon today anyway.
This morning as I was fixing Big Girl's hair before school, she was playing with a little monkey finger puppet. She wanted me to sing "My Monkey" (Jonathan Coulton) to her. I couldn't think of the words to the verse, so I sang "Code Monkey" to her instead. On the CD of Jonathan Coulton songs in my car, the song after "Code Monkey" is "Tom Cruise Crazy," and that's what's in my head now. We sang that one together.
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