Sunday morning madness – little girls, gamecubes, smash brothers and tantrums
{10 comments}
Tantrums, Tears, and Laptop Computers
Here goes – shot with the iPod Nano, starring our youngest, and co-starring the next oldest.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8i_2pvg6A8&hl=en&fs=1&]
The School Barbecue
This afternoon we all trooped off to one of the several events throughout the year at the primary school two of our girls attend. Well… troop is somewhat of an exaggeration, given the tantrum I had to deal with en-route.
It started 15 minutes before we were due to leave the house. Our youngest was told to go upstairs and get changed (she had been at a school church service earlier in the day – wearing her uniform). I caught site of her a few minutes later running around in her underwear, clutching a balloon.
Minus one balloon, she was sent up to her bedroom to get changed. Her older sister arrived at the foot of the stairs soon afterwards, playing her usual role as the whistle blower.
“She’s not getting changed Dad, are you going to tell her off?” (she was obviously hoping we might)
I marched up, and discovered little miss 4 sat in the middle of her bedroom floor amid screwed up school clothes in her underwear, bum in the air, face in her hands.
“Get dressed”
“Mmmmm” (you have to imagine this as a firm, noisy, protesting kind of noise)
“GET DRESSED RIGHT NOW”
She then starts to pretend to cry, because I am shouting at her. I of course realise at this point that she is winning – she has my attention, and the hysterics are finely judged to keep me there for the rest of the performance. I turn and walk away.
You never heard such screams.
Of course Wendy becomes involved now, and marches upstairs to sooth her (in reality she was as annoyed as me, but a change of grown-up usually works). She succeeds in getting her to put clothes on, which is more than I had achieved.
Wendy left for the school (where she would be working on a stall for the afternoon), and I set about making sure our girls had shoes, hair brushed, and half sensible clothes. All went well on the walk towards school – right up to the point where little miss destruction decided to derail herself again.
Apparently the path was too bumpy, we were on the wrong side of the road, and we were going the wrong way. This built up from nothing over the coarse of about twenty yards into stamping, screaming, and writhing around. I stopped her in the path, made her face me and asked…
“What is wrong?”
Shrug.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong.”
Shrug.
I took an executive decision at that point, and hoisted her into the air. She spent the rest of the walk to school (about a quarter of a mile) sniffing loudly into my ear, her head resting on my shoulder.
This is what the first couple of weeks of school does to a four year old. She is so tired, as my grandfather once memorably remarked “she doesn’t know if she’s having a shit or a haircut”.
Of course we arrived at school with a happy, smiling little girl who hugged her Dad’s leg while waiting for a hotdog, said hello to her teacher with a beaming smile, and ran herself ragged with her friends on the school field.
The Morning the Smile Slipped
Before going to bed last night, we talked to the children about them getting dressed as soon as they woke in the morning – rather than waiting for us to “help” them (our helping tends to become “we get them dressed”). At the same time as trying to offload some of the things we do to the children, we are also trying to encourage them to be more independent. Getting themselves dressed is something they are easily capable of, even if they do love it when we are there to assist.
So – 7am arrives, and we can hear that the children are up and about. Despite our having left their clothes neatly folded in their rooms, the eldest cannot apparently get dressed because she has no tights – and is sat on her bed crying. Little miss five is sat in the middle of her bed in her pyjamas, complaining that she “needs help” – having not even taken her pyjamas off. Little miss three and a half is meanwhile dancing around with nothing on, giggling like a maniac.
I snapped.
I marched downstairs and fetched tights for the eldest, marched back and threw them at her (we had already told her where to find clean ones). I then marched into the younger kids room and shouted “WHY DO YOU NEED HELP? YOU HAVEN’T EVEN TAKEN YOUR PYJAMAS OFF! YOU’RE NOT EVEN TRYING TO GET DRESSED!”
Cue bum in the air, and fake crying. That’s really going to help get her to school. Wendy arrived at this point, hastily wrapping her robe around herself, and ordering me out (to get on with the usual routine of making lunches, breakfasts, and clearing the kitchen).
Despite our gradual withdrawal of help over the last few weeks, and despite the inevitable tantrums, tears and accidents, the kids are doing remarkably well. Perhaps the biggest victory so far this year is our youngest – not even four yet – who can now get through the night without pull-ups. She thinks she is tremendously clever each morning, and so do we when greeted with “Look – no wee wee’s in bed Dad!”.
Our eldest is now eight years old. Last night we talked to her about making her own cereals on a morning – so she doesn’t have to wait. “Can I do that tomorrow?”… “You just try and get yourself dressed for school tomorrow”. “Awww”…
One of those days…
Today was one of those days when it doesn’t just feel like all you’ve done is tell the children off all day – you know it’s all you’ve done all day.
After various escapades throughout the day (when I was trying desperately to work in our study), the middle daughter capped off her day’s performance while her Mum was out at the opticians by letting out all the recliner chairs, and shouting at her younger sister “Lets slide down and jump on them like a bouncy castle!”.
After I had been watching for a few moments through the kitchen doorway she noticed me, shot off the couch like lightning, stood with her hands behind her back and said “sorry Daddy… we were just going to sleep”.
After depositing the youngest into the playroom on her own, and ordering little miss trouble maker to her room for ten minutes, the air raid sirens started up from both ends of the house. Wendy then of course arrived home and wondered what on earth was going on.
Several attempts to illicit a story from the little perpetrator were responded to with shrugs, shakes of the head and silence – leading Wendy to walk away from her too. “If you’re not going to tell me why you are in your room, you can stay there then”.
Amid sounds of laughter downstairs a little while later, a pathetic voice drifted down from the landing. “Can I come down yet?”
Just to finish the day off with a flourish, while I took them to the play park after finishing work, she instructed her little sister (who does everything suggested of her) to “run down the slide!”. A fifteen foot long metal slide. She was going to do it too until I bellowed across the park.
Every kid in the place froze. It was like the scene from Jurassic Park where Alan Grant shouts “Freeze!” in front of the Tyrannosaurus.
The lesson was finally learned at dinner time when little miss trouble decided she liked nan bread better than curry, so stopped eating her curry and rice. “When you’ve eaten some more curry you can have some more nan bread”. Shrug. She then watched while the nan bread was slowly shared between everybody else. With one piece left, I held it up and warned her “if you eat some more curry, you can have this. Otherwise I am going to eat it.”… shrug. I ate it in front of her.
If looks could have killed… lol
We do have a rule in the house though – nobody goes to bed in trouble. I ran the youngest’s bath, and played with them. We talked about lessons being learned, and that we would try much harder tomorrow to be nice to each other.
Of course, little madam has no idea what “big school” is really going to be like – or that she starts in two days. It will do her good to get pushed around, and to lose. To lose friends through unthinking actions. To try and win new friends. To find her place.