Monday, January 16, 2012 at 4:23PM “I’m going to fire you as my mama!”
“Sorry kiddo, I was elected Mother-for-Life. You may call me ‘Generalissima’.”
“I’ll call you ‘Mama’.”
“That works too.”
They call them the Effing Fours in Mamahood, Seamus Friday, January 13, 2012 at 4:18PM So the behavior has been a slog for most of the last six months. We got a reprieve when Seamus turned four in that he stopped screaming when asked to do a task he could perform, but he still refuses, demands help, and refuses to accept any consequence for his actions. And yeah, I get that cause and effect can be pretty abstract for a kid, I’ve seen in documentaries what kids his age do in other countries as part of the household, and it makes this whole developmental stages thing look pretty damn first world. Add the asking questions then challenging the answers, speaking to us in snotty voices, and I’m wondering if I could send him out to fosterage with Namibian cattleherds, so he has something to actually complain about.
Then the stuff stream ran from his birthday through to New Year’s, and boy, you’d think he’d at least be satisfied with the haul of shit he’s acquired. Oh no. Apparently Santa played rainmaker for all of his friends and he’s completely deprived. Those goddamn Scholastic book catalogs from preschool open evenings of begging for horrible books based on TV show scripts (we’ve gotten a few from other folks, I checked them and confirmed that) with licensed characters. Then he purposely broke the balsa-wood gliders he got as a gift “because I don’t like the ones without rubber bands” without ever opening them - just snapped them in half, rendering them useless for anyone to enjoy. Badgering me for MORE stuff, while not playing with any of his new toys, many or which are open-ended and lovely. And of course, the refusal to take on his role in the household- no dressing himself, no feeding the cats.
Then the last straw: “I’m going to be good…for Santa”.
“For…Santa? You’re going to start making good choices for Santa.”
“Yeah, so he’ll give me LOTS of toys on Christmas.” There may have been some insinuation that he didn’t get enough stuff this year.
OH HELL NO. We had kept Santa at bay pretty well till last year, when preschool introduced a lot of mainstream stuff we had omitted deliberately. I’ve mentioned St. Nick to Seamus before in the context of giving to others with less than we had, and always pointed out that we had more than enough to amuse and sustain us. But the last half year of tantrums, negotiating and arguing and haggling, always to get his way while he gave nothing in return has worn me down, and the idea that my kid would behave for an imaginary fat guy for an imagined payday is more upsetting than the fact that his classmates’ parents come up to me and tell me how lovely and what a good friend he is to their children while he proclaims to be happy to let our pets starve to death.
“Seamus, Santa isn’t real. He’s a made up story.”
“But he gave me my batteries for my nano-bugs.”
“Nope, that was Dada. We meet all of your needs, kiddo.”
There was some verbiage about how we all do our part to take care of each other and blah blah blah. I’ll be damned if he’s going to keep driving me crazy while thinking some fake dude brought him his toys. Oh no, little man. The pastels you love? and the stuffed tiger? The Babymouse comic? They came from the folks who love and support you and want you to be happy and a fuctional part of our family. Maybe someday you could grok the rest of that memo and join us in making sure we’re all cared for. Start by feeding the goddamn cats.
They call them the Effing Fours, holidaze 2011 in Mamahood, Seamus Monday, January 9, 2012 at 9:30AM Seamus almost went to school half-naked this morning. I don’t mean in his underpants either, but full-out half naked, as he’d thrown his underpants across the room. He knows how to dress himself, and in fact had been asked several times to dress himself while I made breakfast (smoothies and whole-grain toast with hummus or nut butter, which has improved his mood remarkably over his Trader Joe’s Os, presumably by increasing his fiber and protein intake), but got interrupted several times to “help him”. I reminded him several times that he knew how to dress himself, that I needed to get ready to take him to school, and went back to the kitchen. This was getting irritating - getting him dressed is something I don’t want to do. I know he can dress himself, and he doesn’t have an excuse for not doing it. Patrick dresses him still, but it’s not a fight I’ve been wanting to have. Patrick also endlessly negotiates with him, and it makes my life difficult in a thousand ways.
I finally make breakfast, walk to his room, and he’s locked the door. Which means he knows what he’s doing is unacceptable. I walk around through our room and the bathroom, open the door, and find his clothes flung everywhere, and Seamus hiding in the closet. So now he gets yelled at, clothes thrust in his direction angrily, and late late late I get him to the table, and skip breakfast myself so I can get my own clothes on. All the while he continues to yell out for a sippy cup instead of an open cup, that he’s spilled and I need to clean it (another skill he can actually do), and just general regression of behaviors. I manage to get dressed and my various bronchitis meds in me (I’ve been sick for almost three weeks now) and get him in the car. When I sign him in, we’re twenty minutes late. Not a big deal this year, but worrisome for next year. If we go public, that’s an 8:20 start time. Montessori, an 8:30. And it’s school school, not this play-based, project-oriented pre-K program.
If it weren’t a school day, I could have waited him out while I did dishes and laundry and fed myself (and because I’m constantly thinking six months out, the baby too), and gotten the at home things done while he ran through his dickery. But getting him anywhere in the mornings is so damn hard. Patrick is always, always much later than I was today. And if it weren’t for the damn morning bell lurking eight months ahead, plus the fact that he hasn’t stopped slamming against boundaries since he started walking, I’d sweat this a lot less. I’d yell less and feel less stressed about either being a shitty parent because of the yelling, or a shitty parent because my kid is constantly late.
For those of you wanting to tell me that he’ll change at five, I tell you now that the only difference between three and four is that I used to have to be two steps ahead of Seamus in order for the day to not involve yelling, and now I have to be five. The only thing that changes as he gets older is that really basic things keep getting harder as he keeps struggling against them. So fuck off. The only thing that works is to give him no feedback whatsoever, and to wait him out. Which doesn’t work so well when you have to urge a kid through the morning three times a week.
So I’ve made up my mind. Barring some very significant sea change, it’s a gap year at home.
School daze, They call them the Effing Fours in Education, Seamus Monday, December 19, 2011 at 5:02PM On the way home from a walk, during which we have discussed public drunkeness, dog poop, and the myriad wads of gum ground into the sidewalk:
S: There’s a lot of gum on the sidewalk.
Me: Well honey, not everyone makes the right choice, and some people choose to spit their gum out on the sidewalk where people can step on it. We don’t do that.
S: Well, when I’m a grown-up, I’m going to chew gum. And I’m going to spit it out wherever I choose. On the street, on the sidewalk, in the garbage can, wherever I want.
Me: …I’m so pleased to hear I’m raising you to make that kind of choice. Let’s go inside, Mommy has to get drunk now.
