Tag: non-compliance

bad day, mommyhood, terrible threes

I’m Stunned

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The adventure continues… we were at the park and things were going well if you can believe it. All of a sudden Full Speed looks completely panicked. He has to ‘POOP!’

I call to T.Puzzle who completely ignores my command to hurry to the bathroom with us. He climbs higher and higher out of my grasp and smiles sweetly. He knows I can’t do a darn thing about it.

Full Speed’s panic is increasing with each passing second. His eyes are growing wider and he looks at me with pitiful eyes. “I have to poop NOW!” he insists.

I don’t really know what to do. I know what I would like to do. I would like to find a stun gun that shoots lasers and leaves prey temporarily immobile, unharmed and completely compliant. Alas, no laser-stun gun is available to me so I do the only thing I can. I leave little T.Puzzle unattended and Full Speed to the restrooms (which fortunately are right next to the playground). I tell Full Speed  he’s going to have to ‘man-up’ and poop without me in there because I have to stand outside to keep an eye on T.Puzzle. This makes Full Speed crazy with fear. He doesn’t want to be left alone in the creepy, playground bathroom and he starts to cry. “Man-up!” is all I can say to him as I run back outside.

At this point, little T.Puzzle has positioned himself so that he is completely unreachable and he looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. I. AM. LIVID.

Then, I hear Full Speed wailing and look up to find him outside the bathroom crying with his pants around his ankles. “Go back inside, I’ll be there in a minute!” I yell. I’m so frustrated that he couldn’t have just stayed put but really he is the least of my worries. T.Puzzle has yet to move to lower ground.

I run back to the bathroom, clean up Full Speed and my hands as quickly as possible and order him to wash his own hands before he returns outside. I hightail it back out to little T.Puzzle who by this time has lost his focus and has starting chasing some older kids around. He doesn’t realize I am watching him and as he descends to a spot I can actually reach, I make my move. I run at full tilt and grab him. I tuck him under my arm and use the force of my anger to help keep him locked down. I jog the best I can back to the car and Full Speed eventually follows.

The only way I may ever go back to the park or back in public with little T.Puzzle is if someone invents that stun gun I described. Help a Momma out, people.

children, parenting

Contrary Genes and Selective Memories

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New dragon pjs

The boys have clearly inherited the contrary gene. No matter what I say or what I ask of them, there is always some reason why they can’t quietly comply. Sometimes it gets complicated to always disagree with your Mom but they are very dedicated. This morning as I was picking out Full Speed’s clothes, I had landed on a Star Wars theme. I told him this way he could wear his new Darth Vader socks (I think they are super-cool).

How to Train Your Dragon very cute movie.

“Mom, I can’t wear those socks. I was suppose to wear my new Power Ranger socks. I told you Hot Wheels first, Darth Vader second and then Power Rangers last.”

“No you didn’t Full Speed. You already wore Power Rangers and they are in the hamper.”

“Oh.” And he puts on Darth Vader. Why he simply couldn’t put them on in the first place is a mystery to me.

Not to be outdone, as we had been on a family bike ride the day before, little T.Puzzle threw a stubborn, level-5 tantrum about riding on Mom’s bike. Granted, Dad’s bike has much more status attached to it, but it was time to switch back to Mom’s. He tantrumed and fussed and yelled, ‘no!’ and ‘I not!’ and ‘I never!’.

Mad Dog marvelled at his stubborness.

“Full Speed was never this stubborn,” he said.

I was gobsmacked (fun word, right?).

In my reality (wink to you, Mad Dog), Full Speed was ten times if not a hundred times more stubborn than little T.Puzzle at this same age.

This is my theory as to why Mad Dog’s memory is different than mine. If you are a carrier of the contrary gene (such as Mad Dog) then you also must have selective memory when it comes to recalling stubborn behavior of any kind by anyone. That is the only realistic explanation for Mad Dog’s apparent memory loss surrounding Full Speed’s early years.

You know what? I bet he will disagree with me.

Hmmm…, how interesting and not contrary at all.

children, mommyhood, terrible twos

Mother of the Year

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hide my faceDo you ever have days where things fall into place and your children behave better then you hoped for in whatever circumstance? When your kids say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ on cue and they comply with your every command? Yeah, that wasn’t my day at all.

We are now fully back into the routine of Tae Kwon Do. I feel confident I can get T.Puzzle onto the mat without much fuss. So far so good. However, once he is on the mat, he is out of my realm of threats and cajoling. That’s never been an issue before because in a normal class session, he complies beautifully for the instructor. Yeah, that wasn’t my day at all.

T.Puzzle is in his own world right from the get-go. He barely engages in anything the rest of the class is doing. He gets called out repeatedly to join in and doesn’t. He sort of stands there with a spacey look in his eyes. The instructor begins to take notice of how he is behaving. He gets in T.Puzzle’s face and says, “Hands over your head!” T.Puzzle won’t do it. “Hands over your head I said!” Nope, not happening. The instructor grabs his arms and places them over his head. The instructor calls out the next instruction. T.Puzzle refuses again. This time when he gets in T.Puzzle’s face and says, “Do what I ask of you, T.Puzzle.” He looks at him and says, “No.” T.Puzzle says ‘no’ over and over. My stomach drops to the floor. I’ve never seen any student ever tell the instructor ‘no’ and we’ve been attending for several months.

T.Puzzle is stripped of his belt and is forced to sit in time-out. The instructor says, “Get the diapers, someone’s acting like a baby (oh crap, who told!?! The instructor still erroneously believes T.Puzzle is potty-trained).  T.Puzzle proceeds to cry and all the surrounding parents turn their eyes to me. At that moment, I died a little inside.

I don’t know what was worse, the fact he openly disrespected authority or that several parents said, “How can you sit there? Isn’t your heart breaking for him?” Honestly, my heart wasn’t breaking. My kid acts like a nut all the time (his behavior, not him just to clarify) so this wasn’t shocking to me. The instructor handled it exactly how I handle T.Puzzle at home. It made me wonder, does no one else in the world put their kids in time-out even when the kid is crying like it’s the end of the world? Isn’t that sort of the point? Time-outs aren’t exactly Disney World, right?

Then, my humiliation grows. Prior to class I had filled out Full Speed’s behavior report. When I did it, I had no inkling that T.Puzzle’s behavior would be such a disaster. So, I filled it out honestly and gave him a couple ‘Fs’ (fair) because he keeps talking silly and in a disrespectful manner to adults that we encounter such as cashiers, nurses, and waitresses (etc.). The instructor reads his report, is angry (as he should be) and calls Full Speed out in front of everyone. He takes the report, crushes it into a ball and tosses it across the room. He says he expects better from Full Speed (and so do I).

In every other report that the instructor read, the kids had ‘Es’ (excellent) across the board. I’m supposed to believe that all the kids, and the oldest in class is only seven, acted like perfect angels every single day of the week? What. Ever.surprise

I’m clearly feeling frustrated and wishing there was a wet bar in the parents’ corner. I can imagine perfectly where it would fit. The bar could be bamboo with a nice Tiki theme. There would be a fun, Tom Cruise-like bartender straight out of the movie ‘Cocktail’ who would wow everyone into distraction with his marvelous cocktail-making theatrics.

Instead I am left with two boys who couldn’t hold it together and a world of disappointment and embarrassment. Looks like ‘Mother of the Year’ is out of my reach again this year. That is unless there is a category for most alcoholic drinks imbibed by a Mom in a single day. On second thought, I better get my acceptance speech ready just in case.