Sweating the Small Stuff
Nov. 15th, 2005 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerMolly: I want the purple bowl.
Kiera: No, I want the purple bowl!
Molly: No, ME! I said it first!
Kiera: I want it! (*sobs*) MINE!
*
Ages ago, we needed more plastic cups for Molly, and so I bought her a Dora cup and a Strawberry Shortcake cup from Target. Molly loved the Dora cup and wanted to drink from it every night at dinner. This was easy to accomodate. When Kiera graduated to a regular cup, I started giving her the Strawberry Shortcake cup that Molly never used. Except Kiera also really likes Dora, and she started asking to use that cup. Plastic character cups are cheap, so the next time I was at Target, I picked up another Dora cup. Except they're no longer making the kind of plastic cup I bought two and a half years ago; it's a slightly different style of Dora cup now. Naturally, Molly also wanted to use the new cup. It seemed fair to make them take turns using it, but now I'm stuck keeping track of whose turn it is to use the preferred cup.
I resent having to use my already limited cranial real estate to keep track of this sort of minutae. Does that make me sound like Marvin the robot from Hitchhiker's?
*
Kiera: I want my apple cider in the orange cup.
Me: No, you get the pink cup. Molly gets the orange cup. Pink is your favorite color and orange is Molly's favorite color.
Kiera: No! ORANGE cup!
Me: You have the pink cup.
Molly: I'd have let her have the orange cup but I already drank from it.
*
I remember squabbling about precisely this sort of stupid trivial stuff with my sister. I can't remember how my mother handled it, aside from being quite sure that it drove her exactly as crazy as it drives me to be asked to mediate disputes over who gets the prettier spoon.
*
Me: I'm going to make corn bread or corn muffins to go with the chili. Which would you guys prefer?
Molly: Corn bread!
Kiera: Muffins!
Molly: Maybe you can make some of both, Mama. A small loaf of bread and some muffins.
*
There was an article in Family Fun one time (I highly recommend that magazine to other parents, incidentally -- it's mostly articles with craft projects you can do with your kids. It's a dirt cheap subscription, $10 a year. For writers with crafty, child-friendly ideas, it's also an absolutely stellar market, paying thousands of dollars for a feature article) in which a mother said that she dealt with these squabbles by dividing up the week. Her children alternated days. On Becky day, Becky got her choice of bowl color, cup style, muffins vs. bread, etc. On Sarah day, Sarah got first pick of everything. It was fair, and the Mom only had to keep track of whose day it was, not whose turn it was for each individual coveted tiny object. I have thought about implementing this, but her kids were a little older and understood the concept better than Kiera would.
Besides, I hate having to deal with this sort of thing at all. I want to tell them to suck it up -- they get the color of bowl I hand them and I don't want to hear another word about it. Underscoring this is the certainty that it isn't about purple bowls, but about making me work harder. If I am putting away the pink bowl and getting out another purple bowl, or if I'm arguing with you about whether I'll cater to your latest whim, or whatever, you have my attention. Not that my kids are exactly attention-starved, but no preschooler or toddler in the world feels like they get enough attention from their parents. Molly is sufficiently well-read to even be explicit about this at times. ("When you nurse Kiera and don't let me sit in your lap, I feel jealous.") It's also about competing for my favor: if I let you have the coveted bowl, then clearly you must be my favorite child, at least for the moment. I know that competetiveness was underneath a lot of the squabbling my sister and I did over stupid trivia like spoons. You like her better. You don't love me. It's not fair.
Though I love my children equally, I feel tremendously insecure about being fair. If I didn't, I think all the fighting over stupid trivial BS would stress me out a lot less.
Kiera: No, I want the purple bowl!
Molly: No, ME! I said it first!
Kiera: I want it! (*sobs*) MINE!
*
Ages ago, we needed more plastic cups for Molly, and so I bought her a Dora cup and a Strawberry Shortcake cup from Target. Molly loved the Dora cup and wanted to drink from it every night at dinner. This was easy to accomodate. When Kiera graduated to a regular cup, I started giving her the Strawberry Shortcake cup that Molly never used. Except Kiera also really likes Dora, and she started asking to use that cup. Plastic character cups are cheap, so the next time I was at Target, I picked up another Dora cup. Except they're no longer making the kind of plastic cup I bought two and a half years ago; it's a slightly different style of Dora cup now. Naturally, Molly also wanted to use the new cup. It seemed fair to make them take turns using it, but now I'm stuck keeping track of whose turn it is to use the preferred cup.
I resent having to use my already limited cranial real estate to keep track of this sort of minutae. Does that make me sound like Marvin the robot from Hitchhiker's?
*
Kiera: I want my apple cider in the orange cup.
Me: No, you get the pink cup. Molly gets the orange cup. Pink is your favorite color and orange is Molly's favorite color.
Kiera: No! ORANGE cup!
Me: You have the pink cup.
Molly: I'd have let her have the orange cup but I already drank from it.
*
I remember squabbling about precisely this sort of stupid trivial stuff with my sister. I can't remember how my mother handled it, aside from being quite sure that it drove her exactly as crazy as it drives me to be asked to mediate disputes over who gets the prettier spoon.
*
Me: I'm going to make corn bread or corn muffins to go with the chili. Which would you guys prefer?
Molly: Corn bread!
Kiera: Muffins!
Molly: Maybe you can make some of both, Mama. A small loaf of bread and some muffins.
*
There was an article in Family Fun one time (I highly recommend that magazine to other parents, incidentally -- it's mostly articles with craft projects you can do with your kids. It's a dirt cheap subscription, $10 a year. For writers with crafty, child-friendly ideas, it's also an absolutely stellar market, paying thousands of dollars for a feature article) in which a mother said that she dealt with these squabbles by dividing up the week. Her children alternated days. On Becky day, Becky got her choice of bowl color, cup style, muffins vs. bread, etc. On Sarah day, Sarah got first pick of everything. It was fair, and the Mom only had to keep track of whose day it was, not whose turn it was for each individual coveted tiny object. I have thought about implementing this, but her kids were a little older and understood the concept better than Kiera would.
Besides, I hate having to deal with this sort of thing at all. I want to tell them to suck it up -- they get the color of bowl I hand them and I don't want to hear another word about it. Underscoring this is the certainty that it isn't about purple bowls, but about making me work harder. If I am putting away the pink bowl and getting out another purple bowl, or if I'm arguing with you about whether I'll cater to your latest whim, or whatever, you have my attention. Not that my kids are exactly attention-starved, but no preschooler or toddler in the world feels like they get enough attention from their parents. Molly is sufficiently well-read to even be explicit about this at times. ("When you nurse Kiera and don't let me sit in your lap, I feel jealous.") It's also about competing for my favor: if I let you have the coveted bowl, then clearly you must be my favorite child, at least for the moment. I know that competetiveness was underneath a lot of the squabbling my sister and I did over stupid trivia like spoons. You like her better. You don't love me. It's not fair.
Though I love my children equally, I feel tremendously insecure about being fair. If I didn't, I think all the fighting over stupid trivial BS would stress me out a lot less.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
It's about control
Date: 2005-11-15 07:54 pm (UTC)I did something like the Sarah/Becky thing. Odd numbered days were Joanna's, even numbered days were Chris's. In the months with 31 days, I picked on the 31st. Mine understood it very young.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 07:17 pm (UTC)With Amber, we've just had enough repitition in cup etc. usage for her, she knows which ones she can use. And we don't allow arguments from the older kids. Amber (who will be 2 in Feb) even gets sent to her room for throwing fits over things.
We're such mean parents. :)
Recently, the older kids have been commenting on how Amber gets more attention, and tends to get what she wants more often. I finally sat down and explained to them that it's because Amber is still too young to do things for herself, and she doesn't understand a lot of the rules. I also assured them that when they each were that young, they got all the attention at the time. This was a great time to point out that when the new baby gets here, Amber will get less of my time and the baby will get most of the attention - for a while.
Melissa asked again yesterday if she got all the attention when she was a baby. I assured her that yes, she did. And I reminded her that if she wants to do something with me, she just has to remember to ask politely. Once she starts whining, she gets nothing.
I guess in some ways it gets easier as they get older - esp. once they're in school and are adjusting more to having to take turns.
Oh the joys of parenthood!