Looking back on my day today I’ve realized that I caved a lot with the kids today. It felt like I was caving-in every hour. My backbone was missing. From the start of my morning till bedtime I continued to give in to all of their requests. Nilla Wafers before eating breakfast. Seriously? I said “no” twice, then gave in. My day seemed to continue on like this. They wanted the pool set up at the bottom of the slide. No big deal you would think, but my middle child will sit at the top of the slide, afraid to go down, thus holding up the line. The littlest guy will grab the hose and spray his brothers, thus filling the backyard and neighborhood with loud curdling screams. I said “no.” I then said “no” again. I didn’t feel like dealing with the drama, I wanted to weed the garden. Well they got their way of course and things progressed as I had predicted.
Do you ever just cave-in because you don’t have the energy to deal with it all? Standing your ground just doesn’t happen. You do whatever you need to do in order to maintain your sanity? “You want ANOTHER popsicle? You just had one.” “But Mom I said ‘please’.” “Fine.” I’m usually not this lax with them, but I just didn’t feel like arguing. “You want to paint 10 minutes before we need to leave to Grammie’s for dinner?” “Fine.” Why can I handle it better some days and not others?
Well, we all have our moments of weakness. I don’t have kids of my own but I have babysat quite a bit and used to work at a summer camp. I found myself caving in, and that’s really bad to do with kids that aren’t yours, because they deffinately take first impressions seriously. By the end of the summer I had to toughen up, even keeping some of them from going to the pool, you feel awful for doing it but you need to take control in any way you can, I wanted to be their friend at first, I wanted all of them to like me, but then I found out that I wasn’t getting paid to be their friend, I was being paid to be their mentor, the one to keep them in line, I had to make them understand that I could just sit and do nothing all day and they would have to sit and do that same nothing with me, that I didn’t want to go outside and get hot and organize events for them, that I did that all for them, not for me. After a while they got the gist of it and I was in more control. You should do special things with your kids, like the pool/playground thing, but let them understand that they have to earn it, have them do other things to help you out, like cleaning their rooms, helping mommy fold clothes, they know that they will get the reward at the end as long as they keep in line, and if they start to fight you, tell them that when the rest of the kids are playing on the playground/pool, they can sit down until they learn their lesson. There was this one family I was babysitting for, there was a 2 year old, a 4 year old, and a 6 year old, the two year old was acting up, but I gave them all lollypops regardless, that was the bait, then when he continued to act up I let the other kids get a lolly and wouldn’t let him have one. I told him that he needs to pick up his toy cars to get the lolly, when he didn’t he simply didn’t get the lolly, he was mad at me for all of 2 seconds, then he got over it and started to behave. I hope these tips help in some way. ^^
I think it has something to do with the energy you have within yourself. I find if I am well rested and feel energised, I am able to stand more firm with my children.
Oh yeah! Definitely! The camp supervisers told us to not get burnt out, I have to admit, by the end of the summer I was so sick of the kids! But when I left for my last day (the last day of camp) I already started to miss them. I kept thinking “I’m gonna miss my babies!!”