Two Adults Help

I just lost my temper at my daughter.   I’ve done this several times lately with the same thematic message.   Typically when it happens we’re trying to do something like get drops in, brush her hair or get some clothes on in a timely fashion.   My daughter can do many things by herself, but some things she needs assistance with.

She’s had some experience with drops, although they’re expensive and she’s prone to missing so we dp those ourselves.   She’s very helpful, holding her eye open, unless she doesn’t want to do drops at that point.

She can dress herself easily.   She also brushes her hair and puts it in a pony tail all on her own.   She can do a lot of things without help but we run into a problem that almost all children seem to have—zero sense of time.  

She would happily do drops at some point in the future.   She will get dressed for school or bed, but later, not right now.   So we get time crunched and my husband and I both find ourselves surrounding this small human, making her do things she doesn’t want to do because they have to be done for either he medical health, so that she can attend school without being truant or other reason that is reasonable from an adult’s standpoint while being cruel and unusual punishment from a child’s point of view.

So the thing I’ve been losing my temper about is why my daughter dawdles, ignores, tries to get away and flat out defies us sometimes when things need to get done.   In order to make, say, carpool pickup in the morning both my husband and I have to jump in and help her—all the while as she’s cranky about it.

The temper losing I did today was saying how it shouldn’t take two adults help when she is capable of doing it all by herself.   I was’t particularly nice about it either because I said, “when you want to do things with us, keep in mind that instead of using our time to get our work done, we’re using it to help you because you’re refusing to do it on your own.”

I was hoping that would sink in to her—she loves spending time with either of us.   She must have been equally annoyed with my because she said, “you never want to do anything with my anyways.”   I have to give it to her, that was a pretty good low blow.

I told her it hurt me to hear her say that.   I’d spent fifteen hours working on the Monopoly modification.   I was sad because maybe she didn’t see that as meaningful time with her, but it was, I hoped, a way to make the game more fun for her.    

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I have been going out to get breakfast at McDonalds some mornings lately.   While we’re in the card I ask him what he wants to eat when we get there so I can be ready to order.   This morning he though about it and told me, “I’m a B-man.”   He further explained, “B for biscuit, B for butter, B for bacon and B for breakfast.”   I knew exactly what he wanted for.breakfast after that: a bacon biscuit and a butter biscuit,

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   I got a new comforter for our master bed yesterday.   After school I had my daughter come into the room to lie on the bed so she could tip her head back for drops.   She had her eyes patched over so she couldn’t see anything at all.   She sat on the bed, leaning back and putting her hands down.   She had literally be on the bed for three seconds when she said, “Mom, did you get a new comforter?"