Friday, April 25, 2008

Anna's Tantrums

As some of you know, I've had a rough time with Anna this week. I'm trying to be sensitive to the fact that she's just not feeling well, but this morning was AWFUL!!! It began at 6:45 when Anna came into the living room and announced that she was hungry. When I asked what she wanted, she replied "corn chex." Corn Chex? We haven't had corn chex in MONTHS! I told her that we didn't have any and she just started crying and throwing a fit! She REALLY wanted corn chex! I promptly ignored her and got Tommy in the shower, and as I was getting him out, I found Anna in my room looking through my jewlery box. When I asked her what she was doing, she said that she wanted her gold and silver dollars back. Let me back up a day and tell you about yesterday. She wanted to go to the bookfair and had $4, but 2 of those dollars were her gold and silver dollars that she got from the tooth fairy. She didn't want to spend them, but she really wanted to get a book from the book fair, so I offered up a trade. I would take the gold and silver dollars and trade them for paper dollars, and she could work to earn her dollars back. She was happy, and bought her book at the book fair. Okay, fast forward to today. She accused me of STEALING her gold and silver dollars and she wanted them back RIGHT NOW! I tried to calmly remind her of our deal yesterday, but she would scream and refuse to listen! She continued to scream for 10 minutes! She was actually ON THE FLOOR kicking and screaming like a 2-year-old! Yeesh. She's almost 7-years-old for crying out loud! Eddie came in and found her highly ammusing, and Tommy was looking at her like she had just come from Mars, and he kept on asking me why she was crying. I dressed Tommy quickly and left Anna to her tantrum. It was nearly time for school and I loaded Tommy and Eddie in the car. Anna had gone to her room and was quite calm and was actually cleaning it up! ( I think she was trying to earn her money back. ) Well, I told her it was time to go, and she immediately began to cry and say that she was hungry, and she began the whole corn chex fit AGAIN. She had her chance to eat and didn't take it, so I was going to let her go to school hungry. Lunch is at 10:45, so she wouldn't be hungry for long, but the only way to get her physically out the door was to give her SOMETHING to eat. She refused everything from toaster streudels to pop tarts, so I handed her some fruit gushers and said "take it or leave it." She took it, shut up and got in the car. I have never been so happy to drop her off at school! She gets this way when she's hungry, and she just can't be reasoned with! I started reading this Love and Logic book that Mandie bought me and I think it helped a little with this morning. I didn't raise my voice a single time! I was calm, even though I wanted to scream at her, and I think the situation would have been MUCH worse if I had. Thanks Mandie!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I hope the books give you good ideas.

Anna will come around. Meanwhile, try to get some video footage for blackmail opportunities.

randivon said...

I have been meaning to leave a comment for a few days. I love Love and Logic. When I worked at Cook's, that was one of the theory books that we used on the unit with some of our older kiddo's. I have to say that I learned more from that child rearing theory than a lot of the others. I love the idea of just enforcing the consequences... separate from my emotions... to put the responsibility back on the kid. I think it has influenced the way I raise Mary a lot. Now, I am not perfect at it... because sometimes it is really hard to keep my emotions in check. But it does help. I am glad this went well for you and that school was just a couple hours away. :-) You are awesome!

Ginny said...

Anna should count her blessings to have such a calm mom--I hope she appreciates it some day! Have you thought about calling Super Nanny!?