In the past several weeks, Polina and I have had far more than our usual share of battles. She has always had her ups and downs, her happy and tantrum-y times, but now the behavior issues were occurring more frequently during the day.
I am not a strict disciplinarian, as I explained in a previous article here. However, I had my limits and she knew when I was nearing my bandwidth. When I raised my voice, she would stop. Now, when I ask her to stop she keeps going, like my words don’t mean anything, which is all very new to me.
Like the daily jumping ritual when I’m trying to dress/undress her or brush her hair. Or her insistence on lying lifeless in a corner of the bed when I need to brush her teeth.
Last week I had a migraine headache for two days. It was so painful, I asked Polina to play next to me while I rested. This situation happened before and she was able to play by herself, but now she jumped on me, made loud noises, and put objects in my face. I covered myself with a blanket for some peace, leaving a little hole to breathe out of, but she smothered me with her weight on my head. I went to another room to lie down, but she followed me and did the same. It was a miserable couple of hours.
Or this morning, for example. She hung on the bathroom counter while I was brushing my teeth and kept repeating that she was a monkey. I knew she wanted me to affirm what she said, but I couldn’t as my mouth was full of toothpaste and a vibrating brush. I raised my index finger in the “wait,” position, but Polina went into a fit. I continued to brush my teeth but was fuming over wanting to meet her demand but not being able to right that minute. As my frustration increased I grabbed her by the hand, which happened to have a pointy balloon weight in it that hurt her, which led her to run out of the room and scream harder. What a way to start the morning.
I initially dismissed her bad behavior as a fluke, but it persisted.
Time out was our next resort when we couldn’t deal with her behavior any other way. (It’s really a time out for us as much as it is for her.) Half the time the mere mention of a time out led her to change her behavior. Now that she can open doors, time out has become a joke. This past week, she closed the door to the bathroom and laughed about being in time out. In fact, she locked me out and I was the one banging to be let in. On other occasions, when I did put her in time out (while holding the door closed), she walked out and repeated the same behavior within 30 seconds.
That was also new.
Granted I didn’t do it as Super Nanny recommended. I put her in for 30 seconds as opposed to the recommended 3 minutes, but it used to work. My system used to work!
Last week, I took my daughter to the doctor for nasal discharge and pain behind the eyes. I mentioned how her behavior had changed. She went down a list of adjectives to describe a preschooler, and none of them resonated with me until she came to “defiant.”
That was the word that described my current daughter- defiant.
My doctor said it was completely normal and that at this age children want to do things themselves and to test boundaries. She even said that this period, three and a half to four and a half, is harder than the so-called “terrible twos.”
During our “terrible twos,” Polina would have a meltdown if she didn’t like something and especially if she was tired. She had a voice that boomed, even as a baby. She is so sensitive and has such a good nature (even now, when she isn’t Mrs. Hyde) that she expects the world to be good all the time and is disappointed when it doesn’t meet her expectations.
She is exactly like me in that sense.
I recently came to the realization that I can’t contain her environment as effectively as I did when she was a baby or even a toddler. When children are babies, we are their environment, and it is easier to manipulate it to make them happy.
Now that she has been attending preschool twice a week since December (see why here), she wants her world to still be ideal, but there are more moving parts.
Resist as we both might, she is facing the world as it is.
I don’t like the world as it is either. That is why I resort to writing and examining things. It’s my way of coping. But for her, I have increased the amount of hugs I give to her during the day. I also tell her I love her when the feeling wells up inside me, which is several times during the day.
I don’t know what else to say in these situations. When I was a child, my mother didn’t have a bandwidth for my distress. I want my daughter to feel the opposite.
So when I don’t know what else to say or do, I tell her I love her, as if my love can be her cocoon for a little while longer.
A band-aid for the world that is.