Crying Doesn’t Get You What You Want

This is a phrase my husband uses sometimes with my daughter.   She is a very happy child, unless she’s not.   For example, this morning there were cries and screams coming from upstairs where the two children were getting dressed for the morning.    We could hear from downstairs that my son had “touched my glasses!” which was apparently an unforgivable thing to do.   My son could have been intentionally doing it to bother his sister or he could equally have been trying to be helpful and hand her her glasses because she couldn’t tell where they were.  

We’ve been trying to balance the screams and cries and temper them where possible.   We are likely very guilty of worrying overly much about my daughter because she has been through a lot, can barely see, isn’t getting better visually yet in the surgical eye, needs help and oh—likes to cry to get her way.   All that factored in and we may have encouraged behavior we shouldn’t have.  

The other side is my son.   My son will resort to negative words and physical action against someone if he isn’t getting his way, is mad, doesn’t like what was said, etc.    He is working on controlling his feelings but he has a lot of strong emotions.    As a result, he gets verbally corrected frequently and we’re not always sure if we’re correcting on the appropriate side: him or his sister.

We’re trying to balance the power by giving my son more benefit of the doubt and not playing into my daughters, shall we say, “drama queen” behavior.    Parenting is an evolution and an education and an ever-changing landscape on which we, as parents live.  

The Big Boy Update:   Twice now my son has laid down on his back in the rain.   He seems to like the feeling of the droplets landing on his body.   Yesterday at the pool it started to rain fairly hard.  My daughter and our sitter, Morgan, headed under the building but my son preferred to lay down on the concrete instead.   Morgan called out to him saying he could put his blue goggles on so he could watch the rain hit his eyes.  He declined, saying, “yeah, but I only like the rain in this color world, not the blue-colored world.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s friend, Keira, gave her some very frilly dresses she received as a gift some time back that were now too big.   These style dresses are definitely not Keira’s style and had never been worn.   My daughter who lately likes colorful dresses instead of shorts and t-shirts was very excited about them.   She wore one dress for two days she liked it so much.