We’ve Seen This Before

Last night, the lass decided to throw some serious attitude our way. Openly defiant and essentially daring us to come up with some kind of suitable disciplinary method. Our initial attempt was an early bed time.

She didn’t like that, but she refused to go. She decided to stall as a counter measure. Every time we mentioned she should go to bed, she simply crossed her arms and pretended not to hear us. Or she said ‘No’ outright.

At that point, the Wife threatened her with losing one of her stuffed elephants. Again, she bent but didn’t break.

So then I got up and started heading upstairs.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”

Too late. She lost her favorite elephant. And many tears later there she was, in bed. With a quiet reminder that if she’d listened the first time, she would not have lost her elephant.

Of course, we have the boy to thank. The longer we go, the more we see, despite clearly different personalities, similar age dependent behavior. The lass is entering that lovely time where she’ll only eat what she wants, even if that means going hungry; she openly defies the Wife and I when we ask her to do something that she’d rather not like chores, or cleaning up after herself. When the boy went through that time, we found that taking things from him or giving him an early bedtime as effective means of discipline. So far, the lass is responding similarly.

However, when the Wife said “Goodnight” to her, the lass informed her “I didn’t want to sleep with that elephant anyway.”

We may have to get more creative.