difficult child Seems To Me Making Progress

B

Bunny

Guest
So, yesterday afternoon easy child and husband were sitting in the kitchen eating lunch and difficult child was in the dining room doing some homework. I was in the basement. husband and easy child were talking and all of a sudden I hear difficult child tell them to be quiet because he was working. difficult child swears that he asked nicely, but he seems to be the only one who thought so. husband tells him that they were not talking loudly and they would not be quiet (and he didn't asnwer nicely, either). difficult child goes tearing through the house looking for me (oh, joy) because Dad yelled at him for no reason and I needed to go talk to Dad because now he's afraid to and he's not doing any homework and he's not going to tutor easy child until I make Dad apologize to him.

I told him no, I was not going to do that. I told him that I heard him tell the others to be quiet and that it was not WHAT he said, but rather HOW he said it, and that I agreed with the others that he did not ask nicely. Again, it goes back to everyone has to be nice to difficult child and he expects everyone to walk on eggshells around him so that no one upsets him, but he can talk to everyone in any way that he wants and we are supposed to accept it. That made him angry. "I've been TRYING to be nicer to everyone," he shouted at me and why was I bringing that up. It's not fair to him and hurts his feelings. I told him yes, he was trying, but that didn't mean that I could not point out when he did it wrong so that he can do it better the next time. After all, he makes sure that everyone knows when he feels they haven't been nice to him. If he chose not to do his homework, that was his problem, not mine. I don't have to face his teachers and tell them that the work isn't done. As far as tutoring his brother, well, if he didn't do it he was not going to get the raise in his allowance this week that he gets for tutoring. Again, his choice. He kept after me to tell Dad to apologize and I finally raised my voice and told him that I didn't want to hear it any more. I was done with it! So he hid under the dining room table for a while, but at least he was quiet (except for sniffling that I kept hearing).

1:00 pm rolled around and difficult child was still hiding under the table, so I took easy child upstairs and started doing to tutoring work that I had prepared for him. About 20 minutes in, he comes upstairs complaining that I should have waited for him to cool off because he was going to tutor. I reminded him that he didn't tell me he wanted time to cool off. He told me that he wouldn't do it, which is a completely different statement. He did finally take over and tutor for an hour, which was what he was told he needed to do, but it was not the greatest tutoring session. We'll see how things go next week.

Hmmmm....an upset difficult child, but no screaming and tantruming for hours on end. Okay. I'll take that.
 
T

TeDo

Guest
BABY STEPS! difficult child 1 isn't usually able to tell me (yet) that he needs time to calm down. I have to read his non-verbal cues and/or ask him. Usually, my cue is when he goes upstairs for no reason. Just a piece of advice from someone that's been there done that, when he came down complaining to you, I like how you said that "it wasn't what he said but HOW he said it and that it didn't sound nice", but I would have simply stopped talking after that. If difficult child 1 would keep it up, I would do the broken record routine, "no, I'm not going to make husband apologize because I heard the volume and tone of your voice and you weren't nice either" over and over until difficult child dropped the subject. I would definitely NOT have thrown in all "past" stuff. I know it's hard to do but all that does is beats them down. We have a rule in our house, "it's done, it's over now drop it". NO ONE is allowed to throw past mistakes in anyone's face.
 
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