I
am so mad at my younger child right now I feel like screaming. Of course I already did quite a bit of
that. I skipped a talk/panel I wanted to
go to this morning because I figured it was too much to ask him to sit
through. I let him wear his PJs all day because
after all it is a home day. I let him
watch movies this morning while I exercised.
I let him have yet another cheese sandwich for lunch. When it came time to go to the nature center
for a one hour ranger led program for kids his age, he threw a fit. I got him in the car anyway. He continued to throw a fit. We got to the nature
center, he locked me out of the car while continuing to scream at me. I got into the car and somehow got him
inside. His fit continued, but not quite
so loudly as there were now snakes to look at.
Then the nice ranger handed him his sticker name tag. The fit took on a whole new level. I tried all the proper parenting crap with acknowledging
his feelings and attempting to figure out why he was so upset. All I could get was “I don’t want to go.”
Well guess what, sometimes you have to do
things you don’t want to do and by the way, if you would just give it a try you
would probably really enjoy it! My
instinct was to force him back into the nature center (he ran outside when the
ranger tried to nametag him), but I figured the yelling and screaming might
detract from the ranger’s message and the other children’s experiences. So I tried the next best thing – bribery. That didn’t work. I even told him that we could skip the
program and just go for a hike or look at the animals since we were already
there. Fit continued to escalate. So, I finally “lost” - we got in the car and
headed home. But, I can promise
this. No electronics the rest of today and
we will spend the next several months working on what is appropriate and not
appropriate behavior. I actually fear they might kick this one out of
kindergarten (if he survives the next 9 months at home with me to even start
kindergarten)!
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