Vent

[Malika]

This morning... horrible! May have been partly provoked by J watching two hours television - our rule is no TV during the school week and then he watches on weekends. But I don't think it does him any good. He didn't even suggest it this morning or think of it but I have so much work to do at the moment so.... cheap babysitter.

So afterwards he is helping me "clean" and I said something about the sitting room table being too big for the space, musing aloud whether we had a smaller one in the house. I have the little one in my room, he said - a good idea and just the perfect size. He never uses it... so, we bring it down. Then, long story short, he starts going on and on about wanting the table back, I "take things of his all the time and never give them back", and other drama queen histrionics. Crying, shouting, rolling on the floor. This is a table, I repeat, I have never seen him choose to use...

It carries on and on, he starts getting rude and insulting, talking in a tyrannical voice that so pushes my buttons. At one point I felt so angry at the defiant insults I mimed giving him a big slap... Okay, Mrs I Understand How to Deal with Defiant Behaviour, fan-tast-ic....!! Back to the beginners' class. But it is exactly what this kind of defiant rudeness makes you feel like doing - giving him a big slap... In the end I just picked him up in anger and put him roughly inside his room and left him in it (where he angrily took his plastic break-apart alphabet carpet to pieces) .

Afterwards, after all this crisis and drama and spent emotion (on both sides), he started crying, sad rather than angry, saying he wanted me to ask him if I could have the table. This I can understand and respect. Then a bit later he basically calmed down, said sorry several times, was obviously trying hard to be on his best behaviour and not put a foot wrong for the next hour or so. That he does this gives me a glimmer of hope, I think.

It's so exhausting and I'm really not good at it! I'm Really Not Good At It!!! But I have to keep trying to implement the stuff I know - keeping calm, keeping boundaries, trying not to let my own emotions fly off the handle - because otherwise...

Thanks for letting me vent.

 

[buddy]

Oh darn I hate days like that! HUGS. Go cuddle with the dog a little maybe?

 

[Malika]

Sorry, might seem no-big-deal drama. As ever, it's not the external event, it's the reaction that counts... He had a birthday party, seemed to survive intact, then we went for a good walk in the hills around our valley - good way to let off steam and restore the relationship a bit.
A hyperactive kid in a small space is just not... the best recipe for peace and calm.

 

[liz]

Thanks for sharing this Malika! This is just the kind of thing that happens with my difficult child also. Something so minor will throw him into a tailspin and seems like there is no recovery until the whole house has gotten upset and then he calms down after the uproar. It is so hard to deal with day after day after day after day.... ((HUGS!!))

 

[Malika]

Thanks for understanding, Liz To be fair to difficult child, we don't have this kind of scene every day. I think partly what happens with me is that he has stretches of being co-operative and easy enough and then I get lulled into a false sense of security. Or rather, I think, I get lulled into a false sense of expectation - I want and expect a easy child, not a difficult child... then I get angry when the difficult child duly rears his head. Make any sense?
I do actually see that J has lots of glimmers of potential, that he's not unreachable by any means. And there has been progress in the last year or so, definitely.
My new zen state helped by the fact that he has now been sound asleep for three hours

 

[Ktllc]

I'm sorry for a tough day. It is so hard to stay calm and not take it personal. Sometimes, we just want things to go easy, we NEED things to go easy.
I hope you can catch a break and recover some energy and patience. Hugs.

 

[exhausted]

Malika-even PCs can do this to us! It is especially true when we are busy or stressed, they are like radars! I'm glad he was able to calm and tell you what he wanted and said sorry. That is a huge deal for a kid his age, good for him.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Well... lets see. Switching furniture around is a "transition". And difficult children don't like transitions. And... what else did you expect?
Oh. Right. You didn't "expect" this to be a problem.
I wouldn't have either...
You see... it is always 100x easier to SEE this stuff with hindsight.
At the moment? We miss SO much.

I found that each round, it paid to figure out what all the triggers were, so I could be slightly more aware next time.
And then "next time"...???

<blush> I'd be aware of ONE of the triggers, and miss something else, and the one I missed would be bigger than the one I was aware of...

Parenting. It sure isn't for the faint of heart!

 

[Malika]

Oh yes, of course, IC. That was probably it.... It honestly never even occurred to me, I was totally mystified by the whole thing.
No, parenting is not for wimps...
Well, this morning J was his charming, helpful self and we had a "debriefing" of yesterday, in which we even managed to laugh at my performance as the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel (as J puts it). So, onwards and upwards until the next baffling tantrum.

 

[Ktllc]

I'm glad you were able to talk about it with humour. It is not always easy to do: good for you.

 

[whatamess]

He realized you broke a rule, maybe. "Ask permission before you take something of someone else's". You and he discussed the table in his room, but it doesn't sound like permission was granted by the 'owner' for the taable to be taken. This is obviously inflexible thinking, but he is 5 and strong-willed so that might be expected. It would be nice if he could have the conversation with you about his perception of the scene as it's playing out, but it all probably came together in his head so quickly that you had no way of knowing his mind was going in that direction. To add to his frustration he probably thought you should know exactly why this was a grievous error on your part and you should have been seeking to remedy it immediately! I would definitely see this as a discussion about perspective taking and flexibility. I think you reacted as to be expected under the circumstances-J was on a different thought path than you and expressed himself behaviorally. You are doing a good job!

 

[Malika]

Lol, whatamess, I think you speak five-year-old more fluently than I do... What you say makes great sense although... my intuition is really that J was just being "difficult" for the sake of it and the "reasoning" was something he tacked on later to try and put a better light on his tantrum. He likes to be difficult sometimes for no reason other than expressing himself. That's his personality, or his malady, or both of them rolled into one.
And then he likes to be co-operative and loving sometimes, so that is a blessing I should certainly appreciate alongside Interestingly, he sees this about himself. We can see two towers from our house - one intact and one ruined. Yesterday he suddenly called one of these towers a "goodie" (the intact one?) and the other a "baddie". I asked him if he was a goodie or a baddie. "A goodie and a baddie!" he said with a laugh, which I thought was quite wise.