Lessons in Parenting - The Backfire

Life is full of lessons. I don’t think there’s ever a point when you really stop learning. J and I learned a very important lesson about disciplining your child last night. Let’s start at the beginning…

R was at the table, and as she does most nights at dinner, she was barely picking at her food. She would take the smallest bite possible and chew it for 5 minutes! It’s frustrating as a parent to sit and watch your child waste time like that. Then she proceeds to tell us that she has a headache (another of her stalling tricks) and that her back hurts (10 minutes ago she was running around kicking a ball) all things we knew to be untrue. So like most parents would do, we made a statement of If/Then.

If you don’t eat your dinner, then you can go to bed.
If you have a headache, then you should get some rest.
If your back hurts, then you need to lie down.
If you don’t eat your sandwich in the next 5 minutes, then you’re going to bed without any dinner.

Now, many of you that know R, know she is a “strong-willed” child. As a parent of a “strong-willed” child, you can’t make threats that you aren’t willing to follow through on. So, she was sent to bed with out dinner at 6:30.

As expected, she wasn’t sleepy. So it did take awhile for her to fall asleep, but I believe she was asleep before her usual bedtime hour. This is where our lesson as parents begins…

Somewhere around 1 o’clock in the morning, R comes into our room and tells us she can’t sleep anymore. She’s lonely and the stuffed animals in her bed just aren’t enough to keep her company. J, already suffering from a case of the guilties for sending her to bed without dinner, tells her she can lay down next to him for a little bit. (This is not something she usually gets to do, but due to the lack of sleep, one we opted for last night) This worked until about 4 o’clock when one of the cats woke us up with that hacking-up-a-hairball sound that can bring even the deepest sleeping cat owner out of a dead sleep in record time. We all, including R, decided that since we were awake, that it would be a good opportunity to go to the bathroom. Once the bathroom break was completed, R realizes that she is no longer tired and wants to watch TV. After multiple times of trying to explain to her that it’s too early for TV, and she can’t get up to play with her toys, we give up on trying to get her back to sleep in our room and send her back to her room, thinking that even if she did decide to play with things, it may buy us a little more sleep time before the evil siren, I mean, alarm sounds.

So off she goes to her room. We don’t hear much from her and we both drift into that in-between stage of awake and sleep. (I think they call it twilight sleep). Then she comes in and tells us her tummy hurts. I assume it’s because it’s been at least 12 hours since she’s had any food. I tell her to go grab the cup of milk that is in the fridge and drink some of that. (Hey-it bought me some more time in bed without having to get up, give a pregnant gal a break) Sooner than I thought it should, the alarm goes off, and J groans. Apparently he didn’t have much luck falling back to a good sleep either. He gets up and walks like a zombie down to the shower with the hope that it will help revive him some. R comes back into our room and realizes that the radio is on, which means to her that it’s time for all of us to get up.

“Mommy! It’s morning time! Get up!”

(So much for hitting the snooze button)

As my mom can tell you, I’ve never been a morning person.

Add this morning to my growing list as to why.

Lesson learned.

-A