"Serenity now!"
I like to think of myself as a patient father, regardless of what Abbie will tell her therapist in 30 years. I know Abbie will make mistakes, misbehave, do the opposite of what I tell her, and generally dump a full box of proverbial Tasteeos over the kitchen floor of house rules. I need to take it in stride, accept her imperfections, speak at her level, correct behavior immediately, be firm not rough, and never let her see me cry.
I lose it too often though, and occasionally find myself yelling at her most of the day. These days usually start bad, progress through defiance, and go downhill from there. Yesterday was one of those days, at least in the morning.
It began when Abbie walked out of her room a half-hour before her scheduled wake time. The night before, she discovered how to defeat the “childproof” doorknob cover that keeps her locked in her room while she fights bedtime. She still can’t turn the knob when the cover is installed, but she can pull the cover until it pops off, giving her easy access to the spoils hidden throughout the house. I heard her escape from her room, but I stayed in bed for a few minutes, flirting with falling back to sleep while wondering how much trouble she could get into.
When I realized the answer was “a lot,” I stumbled out of our room to find her in the kitchen. She had climbed on the countertop and was playing in the medicines we supposedly keep hidden up there.
Abbie had engaged in two behaviors guaranteed to infuriate me before I could even roll out of bed. For starters she foiled my morning routine. I’m a routine oriented person. Some, specifically my wife, would say “obsessive compulsive.” If you change my plans, I get frustrated. That’s especially true in the morning while my brain is still too groggy to process change; I can get irritated because someone’s trying to talk to me while I read my newspaper over breakfast. I’ve grown more tolerant since the kids made reading a newspaper with today’s date a luxury, but those first few minutes of my morning are still a bad time to throw me a curve ball, even if it’s a Chicago Cubs caliber curve ball. Abbie breaking out of her room a half-hour early constitutes a major curve ball.
She made things worse by climbing on the countertop. Abbie loves climbing on the kitchen counters because that’s where we keep exciting things like formula cans, boxes of food, and dishes. I hate it when she climbs on the kitchen counters because it generally means I have to clean up spilled things like formula, food, and dish shards. It’s also unsafe as she could get into dangerous items like medicines or knives. She could also fall, and while I would feel horrible if she injured herself, sometimes I think a nice wound-free fall might teach her a lesson. I’ve warned her to stay off the counters approximately 864,521,087 times, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. I used to gently remind her to stay on the floor, but now I usually start with stern warnings. Yesterday I went right to screaming.
I pulled her to the floor and warned her for the 864,521,088th time about climbing on the counters. I screamed at her about a dozen more times that morning for trying to climb on the counters, including a few occasions where she just looked upward longingly. It’s not my proudest morning, but I was exasperated. I didn’t know how to ingrain the rule in her mind. I was still tired. My routine had been disrupted, and it was about to change a lot more because her brothers, having seen the open bedroom door, were awake and expecting food already.
I lose it too often though, and occasionally find myself yelling at her most of the day. These days usually start bad, progress through defiance, and go downhill from there. Yesterday was one of those days, at least in the morning.
It began when Abbie walked out of her room a half-hour before her scheduled wake time. The night before, she discovered how to defeat the “childproof” doorknob cover that keeps her locked in her room while she fights bedtime. She still can’t turn the knob when the cover is installed, but she can pull the cover until it pops off, giving her easy access to the spoils hidden throughout the house. I heard her escape from her room, but I stayed in bed for a few minutes, flirting with falling back to sleep while wondering how much trouble she could get into.
When I realized the answer was “a lot,” I stumbled out of our room to find her in the kitchen. She had climbed on the countertop and was playing in the medicines we supposedly keep hidden up there.
Abbie had engaged in two behaviors guaranteed to infuriate me before I could even roll out of bed. For starters she foiled my morning routine. I’m a routine oriented person. Some, specifically my wife, would say “obsessive compulsive.” If you change my plans, I get frustrated. That’s especially true in the morning while my brain is still too groggy to process change; I can get irritated because someone’s trying to talk to me while I read my newspaper over breakfast. I’ve grown more tolerant since the kids made reading a newspaper with today’s date a luxury, but those first few minutes of my morning are still a bad time to throw me a curve ball, even if it’s a Chicago Cubs caliber curve ball. Abbie breaking out of her room a half-hour early constitutes a major curve ball.
She made things worse by climbing on the countertop. Abbie loves climbing on the kitchen counters because that’s where we keep exciting things like formula cans, boxes of food, and dishes. I hate it when she climbs on the kitchen counters because it generally means I have to clean up spilled things like formula, food, and dish shards. It’s also unsafe as she could get into dangerous items like medicines or knives. She could also fall, and while I would feel horrible if she injured herself, sometimes I think a nice wound-free fall might teach her a lesson. I’ve warned her to stay off the counters approximately 864,521,087 times, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. I used to gently remind her to stay on the floor, but now I usually start with stern warnings. Yesterday I went right to screaming.
I pulled her to the floor and warned her for the 864,521,088th time about climbing on the counters. I screamed at her about a dozen more times that morning for trying to climb on the counters, including a few occasions where she just looked upward longingly. It’s not my proudest morning, but I was exasperated. I didn’t know how to ingrain the rule in her mind. I was still tired. My routine had been disrupted, and it was about to change a lot more because her brothers, having seen the open bedroom door, were awake and expecting food already.
posted by Matt at
11:20 PM
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