Because parenting isn't all sweetness and light today i'm serving up a slice of reality pie: the shitty end of the stick so to speak. Not that i really want to air my mistakes for all and sundry but i hope by doing so i (and others) will be less likely to make the mistake again.
Things started well. I was organised, managed to do ironing before we left the house at 10.30. Went to playgroup and the girls got to run free for an hour, everyone was happy. We came home, Anona went to bed for an hour and Gwen was relatively well behaved...until, the carrot incident.
Gwen helped me to peel carrots but then decided to trail the peelings over the floor. (Nothing to get upset about you think, but how easy it is to let yourself get wound up.) On asking her to pick them up i got a loud and very decicive "NO". This is the first time she's ever raised her voice to me so being quite shocked I did what i imagine every mum has done once or twice, I shouted back, "OH YES YOU WILL. YOU WILL LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AND YOU WILL DO WHAT I TELL YOU, OR ELSE YOU CAN GO TO YOUR NAUGHTY STEP". How cliched and ugly this sounds now that it is written down.
"OK" she said casually. Result i thought! But i thought to soon, her response was not in agreement with me but was actually opting to sit on the naughty step (the easier option). What choice did i have here? My threat of punishment was taken up thankfully, so while she sits happily on the naughty step i begin to stew.
The two minutes is up so i ask nicely again, "now please can you clean up your mess?"
The response again, "But i don't want to", and by this time it's too late for me and i see red and pick her up and deposit her in her cot telling her that she can stay there until she learns her lesson.
At this point i should have realised that i had a choice about how to deal with the situation. I let my anger carry me and take control even though i knew in my heart that I was wrong. The anger said, she's got one over on you, she's dictating to you and she needs to be punished. My heart said, you're upsetting her, she looks up to you and learns how to act from the way you act. But i didn't listen, i was too angry.
How sad i am to have treated my daughter in this way. In hindsight i can see that my thinking at the time was probably due to some non-sensical common sense which told me that if i let her speak to me in that way and not clean up after herself then she would grow up thinking that she can shout at people and not clean up after herself, and ironically that's exactly what my actions reinforced.
By shouting at children they learn to shout. By getting angry they learn to get angry. When children are punished they learn to punish. If i truly think about what message i wanted to get across and the best way to do it i could have done without all the angry words, tears and the upset and confusion they caused. Even if it meant cleaning up the said carrot myself (which i did in the end anyway).
What i have learned today is it that children don't need acoustics to understand something. They are emotionally intelligent and can feel when they have done wrong or upset someone. My shouting today was probably the result of learned behaviour that has been passed down from generation to generation. It is scary how easy it is to follow these unconscious thought patterns, and so today i made the choice to break that cycle. From now on every action i take will be the result of conscious and considered thought. I am so sorry Gwen, I won't let it happen again xxx
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