Edit: Thanks for the advice. I didn’t want to describe the exact situation because I was hoping for more general advice. Listing the age probably would have helped, though. To preface this, I don’t have kids
I was left with my 2-year-old niece this afternoon. My sister was working, and my brother-in-law was taking my other niece (5) to a birthday party. Before he left, my brother-in-law put the 2-year-old down for a nap. He told me to wake her up in 2 hours. She woke up in about 20 minutes.
At the time, I was doing some electrical work with the entire house out, because fuck the person who labeled the breaker. So I’m knees deep in exposed wires when I hear someone screaming “daddy!” upstairs. I made things as… less unsafe… as I could and went to her room. After trying to console her for about 10 minutes, I decided to let her just cry it out. She never did.
I finished my work, running up and down the stairs several times (like you do when someone doesn’t label the fucking switches), and I went back in her room. She’s still screaming for her dad. I eventually got her to calm down by pulling up a nursery rhyme video, and getting her a snack.
So far as I’m concerned, “I did everything right”. I didn’t get upset, I tried to let her resolve her own issues, and ultimately, I was able to get her to calm down. (I said I didn’t get upset. I got very worried she’d walk out with all the wires out of the wall) Still wonder could I have done anything differently? Is this just a no win scenario? What would you have done?
Now the 5 year old I have different problems with. She likes to push buttons. The latest thing being her trying to jump on me when I’m on the couch. My sister has a pretty straightforward time out protocol, which, I’ve “abused” in the past. They usually give her 5 minutes, I gave her 15 with less warning than they give. (She hit her sister, wtf am I supposed to do…) Holy crap I’ve never seen a kid that upset! She appealed to my brother-in-law and got the sentence reduced to normal.
So now she does this thing where if I tell her not to do something, she’ll try to side step it to see what she actually can get away with. Do I straight shut that down? Do I let it go for a while? She tries to have these kinds of things arbitrated by my sister and brother-in-law. They don’t exactly take her side, but they don’t take mine either. They kind of let it alone, which empowers her.
My sister and brother-in-law are by no means roll-overs. They take discipline seriously and have fantastic communication with the kids about how both parties feel, why, and why the consequences are what they are. But I tend to be less tolerant of behavior I’ve already addressed and see as unacceptable. Thoughts?
This is a wildly vague question, but a snippet of advice I was given years ago by a mate with a kid a few years older than my (then) toddlers was “You don’t have to provide them with constant entertainment, you just need to do one or two activities for a short amount of time and that’s what they remember”.
It’s great advice. Kids at early ages can be a fucking nightmare, but the truth is, you take them swimming for an hour, or do some painting for a while, or go to the park for a bit, and that’s what gets imbued on their consciousness. You get the rewards when they fill in that little book at school about what they did at the weekend, and it’s a ten minute window of shit you did that was fun for them, and not the rest of the stressful admin that comes with dealing with young children.
My nearly adult kids often say to me now “you were always doing fun things with us”. Mate, I played table tennis in a shed with you for 20 minutes, or sat down with you for a bit and made a robot out of a fucking cardboard box and a bog roll.
One or two activities a day where your attention is fully on them is enough to create happy memories for them. You don’t need to helicopter about.
And the rest of the time it shouldn’t just be choice of locking them in a room vs entertaining them. Just include them in whatever you were going to do anyway. Cleaning the house? Kid gets a small/toy broom. Laundry? Kid carries empty baskets or something. Holding wrenches or flashlights for repairs is traditional.
None of these things will make the tasks go faster, of course, but the child is occupied and learning to be helpful, and you aren’t driving yourself crazy trying to run a household and entertain them 24/7 at the same time.
I actually got one of my nieces to help me spackle this morning, but I’ll be more conscientious of that in the future. Thanks
Damned good advice.
Extra bonus points if you live in the country, you can let them go play in the woods for a while. Kids can get creative in woods.
I really like this. I’ll keep it in my back pocket