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Holidays and difficult children... exhausting!
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 329346" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Something to cosider - Christmas, and other holiday gatherings of extended clan, put your family in close contact with other difficult children, including adults who demand respect even when it's not earned.</p><p></p><p>mother in law is very GFGish a lot of the itme. I understand where it's coming from, but it's too complex to explain to difficult child 3. mother in law will only listen to (or hear - she IS badly deaf but doesn't like to admit it by wearing her hearing aids) some of what is said. She gave us money for Christmas to buy a new flat screen TV (Aussie networks have just gone digital and are switching off analog signals soon, we need to upgrade). husband had take measurements and yesterday when we were busy in the supastore, we sent difficult child 3 to the TV department to find where the flat screen TVs were that were the size we wanted. We sent him over with a tape measure.</p><p>difficult child 3 came back and said, "I found what you wanted me to look for, I'll show you."</p><p>mother in law misunderstood, thought that difficult child 3 was (once again, in her mind) telling us what to buy with OUR gift, for HIS pleasure. We tried to tell her, he was only doing what we asked and wasn't telling us what to buy, just telling us which ones fitted the measurements we'd given him. But she till insisted on taking him aside and telling him to back off and stop telling us (his parents) to buy what HE anted. Naturally he got upset by this and tried to tell mother in law that he wasn't donig anything of the sort; then mother in law got upset with his "tone". But since she herself was using the same "tone" this didn't wash with difficult child 3 at all.</p><p></p><p>We keep trying to tell her - treat him with the same rspect you want from him, because that is the only way he will learn. But old habits die hard and she keeps snapping back to, "Thisis how I was raised and how I raised my children. Don't tell me how to handle kids; to do so is to accuse me of being bad at parenting."</p><p></p><p>So the troubles at the moment that we're habing with difficult child 3 getting rude and irritable with others he's around, is being badly aggravated. husband then feels pressured to support his mother and he snaps back into "male disciplinarian" mode (it's an instinctive reaction, worse when you're tired) and it all begins to escalate.</p><p></p><p>So I spend a lot of these family gathering situations trying to hose tings down, head problems off at the pass and generally referee interactions. I know I just mixed metaphors badly but I'm sure you know what I mean.</p><p></p><p>End result - exhaustion!</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 329346, member: 1991"] Something to cosider - Christmas, and other holiday gatherings of extended clan, put your family in close contact with other difficult children, including adults who demand respect even when it's not earned. mother in law is very GFGish a lot of the itme. I understand where it's coming from, but it's too complex to explain to difficult child 3. mother in law will only listen to (or hear - she IS badly deaf but doesn't like to admit it by wearing her hearing aids) some of what is said. She gave us money for Christmas to buy a new flat screen TV (Aussie networks have just gone digital and are switching off analog signals soon, we need to upgrade). husband had take measurements and yesterday when we were busy in the supastore, we sent difficult child 3 to the TV department to find where the flat screen TVs were that were the size we wanted. We sent him over with a tape measure. difficult child 3 came back and said, "I found what you wanted me to look for, I'll show you." mother in law misunderstood, thought that difficult child 3 was (once again, in her mind) telling us what to buy with OUR gift, for HIS pleasure. We tried to tell her, he was only doing what we asked and wasn't telling us what to buy, just telling us which ones fitted the measurements we'd given him. But she till insisted on taking him aside and telling him to back off and stop telling us (his parents) to buy what HE anted. Naturally he got upset by this and tried to tell mother in law that he wasn't donig anything of the sort; then mother in law got upset with his "tone". But since she herself was using the same "tone" this didn't wash with difficult child 3 at all. We keep trying to tell her - treat him with the same rspect you want from him, because that is the only way he will learn. But old habits die hard and she keeps snapping back to, "Thisis how I was raised and how I raised my children. Don't tell me how to handle kids; to do so is to accuse me of being bad at parenting." So the troubles at the moment that we're habing with difficult child 3 getting rude and irritable with others he's around, is being badly aggravated. husband then feels pressured to support his mother and he snaps back into "male disciplinarian" mode (it's an instinctive reaction, worse when you're tired) and it all begins to escalate. So I spend a lot of these family gathering situations trying to hose tings down, head problems off at the pass and generally referee interactions. I know I just mixed metaphors badly but I'm sure you know what I mean. End result - exhaustion! Marg [/QUOTE]
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