The Big Boy Update: Some days my son has these moments. Today he had several of those moments strung together and then piled on top of each other and lost it at him.
My children had come home from school in happy moods. I gave them bananas to eat in the back of the car and when we got moving, I asked my daughter what was on her finger. She had something that was obviously (to an adult) a pipe cleaner and tissue paper butterfly, but it’s always nice to let the child tell you what they’ve created, so I let her tell me about it.
Her brother didn’t apparently make one or didn’t want to bring what he made home or forgot his or who knows what else, but he didn’t have one. He didn’t care though because he just wanted to eat a banana right then.
We got into the house and each did our after school things, cleaning up, going to the potty, not putting your shoes up in the shoe place and being chased down, brought back in the house and stood over until the shoes were placed in the shoe bin, singing the Old MacDonald’s song with strange farm “items” instead of animals and (if you’re mom) trying to clean up while all this is happening.
There were preludes and signs I should have seen to my son doing something I shall call, “scream-worthy,” but I didn’t see them. There were things happening in my mind that likely caused me to be more on edge and more easily pushed into the top-of-the-lungs screaming, but I didn’t notice that either. Then, it happened.
My son was getting ready to go to dinner, putting his shoes on and he picked up the butterfly his sister made. He told me, “I don’t like butterflies.” I told him that was okay, he didn’t have to make one. He said, “I didn’t make one.” Now I don’t know if he wanted to and didn’t get a chance or was busy and missed the time they were being made or really didn’t want to make one, but the next thing I hear, my daughter is crying miserably. She comes to me with a wad of tissue paper that was her butterfly. My son had crushed it, smashed it, ruined it. So I lost it.
I screamed at him telling him it wasn’t okay. I got the catalog of Halloween things he was holding and tore it in half, saying he it was ruined and saying, “but she can make another one” did not ever mean it was okay to destroy someone else work. I went around the corner and got the sticker page he’d been carefully working on earlier and tore it up in front of his face. I told him to get into the car and that I would not be talking to him during dinner because I didn’t want to spend a meal with someone who would intentionally destroy something someone else had made.
There was a lot of crying and wailing. My son tried everything in the car, including saying, “I don’t like tomorrow!” My husband wouldn’t let him come inside to the restaurant while he was upset, but he eventually calmed down. I gave him cold stares all during dinner and he asked why people kept looking at him, because he knew he’d behaved badly.
He was exhausted mentally from the ordeal and fell asleep on the four minute ride home. We got him up and I told my husband I was going to have a different kind of conversation with him now. I held him and we lay down on the bed together (he was still a little sleepy.) I asked him how he thought his sister felt and did he like how he felt and overall, we just talked about it calmly. He understands what he did, but I’m not sure he wouldn’t do it again if he felt he wanted to. He just has a little bit of something in him that causes things like that to happen.
We’re good friends again, although I will step in again any time I see behavior that needs correcting. Hopefully, it won’t be with screams, but every so often something happens that makes me mad enough to do so. Today, it was the butterfly massacre.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter spent some time today with a balloon’s string, tying it onto the knobs on a dresser. She told me it was for Ghadi’s birthday. She further told me Ghadi was Ghi Ghi’s friend. If Ghadi moves in, that’s four imaginary friends we have running around the house here.
Fitness Update: Seven miles running this morning and then my upper body workout (about a half-hour) this afternoon. It’s only one day a week, but those thirty minutes make all the difference in my upper body. Before I did anything, I had runners legs and arms that only knew how to move back and forth in time with my runners legs.
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