xeryfyn's Diaryland Diary

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Time Outs and other Quandries

I've been stepping up my discipline methods at home. Julia kind of spends a lot of time in time out right now but hopefully it will pass as she gets beyond the ego-centrism that comes of this age. Insomuch as she is becoming aware that she is a person separate from me, with her own style of doing things, her own wants and needs, she is still so centered on fulfilling them that she spares no thought to those around her. it is a tougher role than I want it to be to show her that other people exist inthe world for reasons other than her own fulfillment. What, you're not here to serve me? No, dear, I am not.

I never really knew the consequences of letting her sip from my cup or steal a bite from my plate until she only wanted to drink from my cup and eat off my plate. As though the food and drink tasted better coming from me. And for awhile I capitulated, allowing her to eat off the ceramic plates while I had the plastic ones. She was never a plate thrower anyway so what harm couild it do? Well it's a slippery slope, my friends.

So I've taken it back. She no longer has the choice what to eat off of, just what to eat. And sometimes I allow her to choose where to eat, just not how to eat (must not dip her hand in the juice, for instance).

It is a battle that we wage every day: she looks at me with plaintive eyes and asks "Mama, have ice-keem on a plate, peese?" And I say "Nope, sorry, no ice-cream for breakfast." She has a hissy fit and then sits on the stairs for a bit. She comes out and whispers, "Wanna ice-keem?" And I whisper back, "No ice-cream." She looks up at me after a moment of thinking and says, "OK, possicles?"
And I say, "No, popsicles, either, sorry."

I know, I'm a hardass. Its not that I never give in, I just do it less often. I used to cave like a house of cards and I think that it was contributing to her "world around me' thinking. And since I watched this I am wondering what on earth I need to do before things escalate. Are my time outs ineffective? Perhaps. No. Almost guaranteeed. The other day, she was throwing toys and I said to her, if you throw one more toy, you'll have a time out. Well she looked at me, threw a toy and then put herself in time out (I usually have to bring her there). It was suddenly a game and she was mocking me, dammit! I was shell-shocked. It was horrifying and funny all at the same time. I have to get my ducks in a row PDQ cause Elena's big eyes dont miss a beat and soon I'll have two little punks intead of just one that I can still pick up at will.

Dwayne's mother offers all sorts of unsolicited advice about how we uoght to spank her more often to get her in line but I dont see the benefits and I dont think that it works. Dwayne is unsure whether or not to listen to his mother but is pretty tightly wound around his little girl's finger and I dont think that he is ready to hit her even if he was goaded by his mother into believing that she would grow up to be completely unmanageable unless he resorted to her barbaric spanking regime. We disagree about what we should do, which is the biggest problem, but since I am home with them 99% of the time, the final decision about what to do and how lies with me.

No one said parenting was going to be easy but fer fark sakes man, gimmee a break, eh?

6:50 a.m. - 2004-12-16

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