My daughter has had a very bad attitude towards her father and me lately. She has been rude and irreverent and has acted as though she deserved everything and expected us to give her things and serve her. Not all the time, no, she's definitely a very sweet child. But there has been a disappointingly large percentage of the time she's had unacceptable behavior lately.
I lost my temper quietly a few days ago. I said sadly that I'd made a mistake in getting them the audiobook because obviously they weren't appreciative of it and were disrespectful to our neighbors. It was with great sadness that I wouldn't be able to get them more audiobooks. No, no, go ahead and enjoy this one. I don't know that I can let you have any more, after today's behavior, children. Words like that frightened them both.
My daughter found out the next day from her father that I wasn't absolutely not letting them have any more audiobooks, but that she had better step up her behavior and likely should apologize to your mother if you wanted to change things. My daughter informed us she had already apologized loads (she hadn't apologized once and her attitude certainly hadn't changed.)
She and her brother listened to the last audiobook yesterday for hours and I thought they'd finish it, but they stopped with a few hours to go. Today, my daughter came in the bedroom this morning and climbed up on the bed and asked if I was awake.
When I told her I was, she said to me, "Mom, I'm sorry for how I've been acting lately. I need to work on my actions." I told her I thought that would be a very good thing. She then said, "oh, and I need to work on saying words like 'grrr.'" I told her that was a smart move and if I could help her, to please let me know. The saying 'grrr' was a specific thing she ran into with me. I would try to talk to her about something—maybe even something she was interested in—but for some reason, if she didn't like how something went, she would say, 'grrrr" at you while you tried to explain.
This reminded me of the time a while back when she had insulted her friends and had to write apology notes. She acted like she had no idea she'd done anything wrong until suddenly she capitulated and made it clear with what she wrote that she knew exactly what she'd done. The same thing here, she knew very clearly what she had done.
She didn't ask if she could have more audiobooks. But she did demonstrate that she knew exactly what she was doing that was unacceptable behavior, even though she denied it at the time. I told her I thought if she was going to work on those things, I could relax the no new audiobooks rule and we'd see how it went together. So far, it's been a very nice day with her.
The Big Boy Update: Before bath the other night my son came in while I was running the water and said, "Mom, is this how you make a baby? Boom, bam, activate!" Imagine him doing kung-fu like motions with the above statement. I said, "Yes, hon, that's pretty much how it happens." He dropped his arms to his side and looked at me with a look of knowing as he said, "No it's not. I know you take medication."
The Tiny Gitl Chronicles: My daughter was talking to her father this morning when she declared, "I'm not afraid of anything except lawn mowers and spiders!" Then she added, "and big trucks and wasps."
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