When I had left last night, no butter knife. I get home this morning, voila! A butter knife has magically appeared next to my comb and curling iron. Is she trying to tell me she's planning on cutting my hair, or my throat? Am I supposed to pay her "protection" money now? And if so, what exactly could a 4-year-old spend money on? Coloring books? Dresses? Wait, shoes! She asked me recently, "Did you know that there is a store that sells big girl shoes for ten dollars, mommy? They're really pretty shoes. I wish I had some shoes for ten dollars..." Little did I guess that it was extortion! She's sneaky, I'll give her that. And I made plans to look for her little ponies. In case one or more are missing a head.
I talked to her about the butter knife, and yelled, and told her she was never, ever, never supposed to touch a knife, at least until she turned seven (by that time she'll probably forget. Yes there's a method to my madness.) She told me she hadn't put it in the bathroom, and she didn't know how it got there. I asked if it might have come from her room, and she said yes, so I just knew she had to have put it there.
Then her dad woke up and told me more of The Diary of a Pre-School Diana and I realized she hadn't "made me an offer I couldn't refuse" but instead had been up to her old tricks: last night, he went into their bedroom because the baby was crying. Diana was already asleep, but he found a wet spot in front of their window, and he was worried that the window was leaking. As it turns out, it wasn't their window leaking, it was the bag of fucking peaches she had shoved underneath their dresser! He also told me that he had found the butter knife with the peaches, and might have left it in the bathroom after cleaning up the peach ... juice.
I asked Diana what a mommy needed to do to make sure a little girl understood what the "no-no" things are, and she told me, "I don't know." I then asked if spankings would help her remember, and she wouldn't answer (understandably, since there really isn't a good answer.) Her dad is a list-maker, so perhaps she is, too. We made a list. I have to teach her to be responsible for her actions. Accountability. My mom tried with me when I was about her age: "Honey, I'll give you a nickle every day that you make your bed, ok?"
My response: "I'll give you a dime if you make it for me." I was never good with manual labor, even as a child, but I have always been good with numbers. This isn't about manual labor, though - it's really about responsiblity. Doing what's right, even when you don't want to. The consequences when you don't. And what happens when you tou my stuff! Oh, and knives.
On her crayola board, we wrote the rules: No food in the bedroom, No knives EVER, No potty-ing in pants or dresses (but Pull-ups are ok,) No food out of the kitchen, No silverware out of the kitchen, No touching Mommy's stuff, and No touching Daddy's stuff. After much repetition, she repeated these rules, and I posted them in the living room. I also told her that if she broke these rules, she would get 5 spanks from Mommy and 5 spanks from Daddy, too. "So, what's Diana's punishment for breaking a rule, Diana?"
"Five spanks from Mommy," she tells me.
"And what else?"
"Two spanks from Daddy."
Her dad started laughing, and had to cover his mouth. "No, pumpkin, five spanks from Daddy, not two," I told her.
"But Daddy spanks hard," she told me. "Two spanks from Daddy."
What?! She's fucking bargaining? It sounds like she's planning on breaking them already! This isn't a fucking swap meet! "Five spanks from Daddy," I told her firmly, and we went over the rules and consequences again. We both gave her hugs, and then I filled her sippy cup. "What were you laughing about, honey?" I asked after she had made it to her room.
He leaned closer, and said, "THAT is your daughter, through and through! One hundred percent YOU!" and laughed some more. I couldn't really argue. I could totally see it: dimes verses nickles, two spanks verses five. (Can a 'mother's curse' be revoked?)
About a half hour later, she informed us that she had held her potty, but when she stood up, it was too long, and she pottied her pants. I turned to her dad, and said, "I believe this is a T-E-S-T."
He said, "Yep," and we did the dirty deed: we gave her the spankings, and she cried. We talked about going potty as soon as she felt a little like going potty, then we gave her hugs, and had her show us which rule she broke. She pointed right to it. Oh yeah, she knew.
She arrived back in the living room a short while later: "Baby Sisser stinks!" and she pinched her nose together with her fingers. "Oooh, she stinkies bad!"
"Ok, pumpkin, Mommy'll change her."
"Well, I have rules for my room, and Babby Sisser broke one of my kid rules for my room."
"Oh yeah? What rule did she break?" I asked her.
"My rules says she's not allowed to poopie in her diaper."
"Well, if you make that rule, I'm going to expect you to follow it, too. Remember about how you won't get spanked if you potty in your pull-up?"
"Yes, but she's wearing a diaper, not a pull-up," my little loop-hole-finder tells me.
"If you make this rule about diapers, I'm taking out the 'Pull-up' exception. That means if you potty in a pull-up, you'll get spanked. Is that what you want?"
"No," my little tyrant told me.
"So, no spankings for pottying in pull-ups or diapers, right?" and she agreed. "It's really an offer you can't refuse." Mommy 1. Diana 0.
UPDATE: That night, she got up in the middle of the night to potty in the potty chair. She had already gone in the pull-up, so she put another one on to go back to sleep in, so she didn't potty in her pants while she's sleeping. I can only hope that I have finally gotten through to her! (Also, she can't really read yet, she just memorizes the words, so instead of 'things,' she reads 'stuff.')
No comments:
Post a Comment