Peaceful Solution

There was a mess upstairs yesterday.   My husband was out and I was responsible for getting the children lunch.   They were hungry and had placed their orders—my daughter demanding hers be microwaved first.   My son was not happy because I had interrupted him in the middle of something, saying the mess had to be cleaned up.

Obviously there was a lot of blame going back and forth on who it was that had made the mess.   If stories were to be believed, neither child had even touched a toy but had merely stood by while the mess appeared on its own.

That wasn’t a problem, I said and told them I knew they would do a good job cleaning up while I got lunch ready.   I explained their lunch wouldn’t be ready (meaning available) until everything was put up.   There was grumbling, followed by angry words back and forth.   I told them I was sure they could work out a peaceful solution and they could come down when everything was cleaned up.

My daughter appeared downstairs first and when asked, confirmed that the mess was now tidied.   Her brother yelled down from upstairs that it hadn’t been cleaned up and he wasn’t doing it by himself.   When I explained to my daughter she would not be having lunch without helping, she got mad and stormed back upstairs.  

As a side note here, my daughter lied to me, knowing her brother would tell on her and that I was going to check anyways.   I need to find out what’s going on in her mind because she’s got some interesting behavioral patterns going on, including making demands like her food being microwaved first.

As I was finishing microwaving the requested soups I heard my son say, “how about I hand the toys to you and you put them in the bin?”   Wait, did I just hear compromise and cooperation suggested?  I think I did.   Yes, they had come up with a tenable solution to cleaning up the single pile of dumped toys from the one bin in their bedroom.  

Two minutes later they were downstairs without a word said about the now clean room.   Their lunches were ready and on the table, which is all they cared about.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked us to call him Michael yesterday.   Today he told me he wanted to be Michael in the game we were playing and what name did I want to be.   In the car going to dinner I asked him why did he want to be called Michael?   He replied, “it’s my favorite name.”  He further explained to me that he now had two middle names with Michael being the added, new name.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was having some issues with a puzzle on her iPad.   I helped her complete the one and then told her she was on her own for the second puzzle because I had something I had to get done.    Mostly I wanted her to apply the information I had told her about lines meaning edge pieces to see if she could finish the next puzzle without help.    About ten minutes later after asking for help a few times she said in an exasperated voice, “I’m telling you, I’ve been working for DAYS on this!”