Last night was going really well. The boys and I had a nice dinner, and Steve and I made plans for the three of us to go for a drive to look at Christmas lights.
Then, Jack had what was basically the Chernobyl of potty training accidents. You would not believe how calmly I handled it, like a real mommy. The strongest emotion I expressed was to say, "Oh, yucky!" It was such a hideous mess that I decided to just give him a bath. I had Steve finish off the bath so I could clean up any additional mess and change my shirt (seriously, people: ew). Jack did not want to get out of the tub, a feeling he expressed by slapping Steve across the face, hard.
Steve put Jack in his time out chair and had me take over. Jack started to apologize, but then punched me. More than once. Back in to his room, this time by himself and with the door closed.
More hitting continued, so we had no choice but to tell Jack that because "nice guys get nice things and mean guys do not" that we would not be going to look at Christmas lights. That resulted in lots of crying.
We finally calmed him down and got him to go to bed, only to have him pop out of bed at least 20 times.
It was a really, really hard day to be a parent.
7 comments:
Jack! You fool. This is not the time to go making your parents mad. Don't you know Santa is coming?
Seriously though, that blows. I wonder what go into his head?
Oh Betsy. I'm so sorry. You sounded so calm too. WOW. Thank God you were both there to hand off. There will be better days, hopefully soon and hopefully lots of them. Hang in there.
I hear you! We are always wondering what it will be next with Aidan. There could never be a really inclusive book on parenting because it is much to complicated!
That's why the human race has continued. Women handle those situations so much better than men (ok just me).
Oy, oy, oy I seem to be having a lot of those days also :-/ Hang in there chica!
I've been dealing with aggression issues with my son as well. He's been OK with us, but suddenly he's beating up on kids at school. Sometimes it's playing too rough without meaning to, and sometimes it's just anger. (Either way it still sucks.) It's definitely the age, especially with little boys. I think sometimes there is a disconnect between what they want to say/express and just reacting.
It sounds like handled it perfectly!
That was supposed to be "sounds like you handled it perfectly."
My typing sucks.
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