“YOU RUINED MY LIFE!”
This is what the boy said to me in the car on the way home from school yesterday. I would expect to hear this from a melodramatic sixteen year old, but come on…my kid is six.
What sucked for me most about this was that I had a pretty good day at work. I like having good days. For this one in particular I had been quite nervous in the days leading up to it, but once things got rolling, I felt pretty darn good about it. And had a good time at that.
It started with him as we were leaving school. He was hungry and unhappy that the after-care program had run out of milk for snack. So he had to drink water - the horror! Then he ran down the hall and out the front doors while totally ignoring my calls of “Stop! Wait up!” Once outside he was goofing around, and told me that he had been ignoring me on purpose. Now I can let this go on occasion, but he was being so smarmy about it that I had to pull the time out card. We have set a rule in place that if we have to tell him something three times, and he hasn’t responded or taken said action, then he will get a time-out. He hates time-outs, so it works well. And he knows when he’s gotten to two that he takes action. This is primarily used for things such as not listening or not being safe. But when in addition to the smarm I got the puppy dog eyes and the whiny begging “Please don’t give me a time-out…. PLEASE!!!” it was the final straw. So I told him that he couldn’t watch TV or play on the computer until his father got home. Knowing that Shiny wouldn’t arrive home for at least an hour after we did. The kid was not amused.
A majority of the car ride was whiny complaining about said consequences, asking me why I did that, why I NEVER let him do what he wants to do, how I wasn’t being nice, and my repeated explanations to him that if you are not nice to Mommy then Mommy won’t be nice to him, do undo others, blah blah. That was when the “You ruined my life” statement was stated.
The very first thought I had in my head in response to this was “I brought you into this world…” But instead I asked quite patiently (considering) if he wanted me to ignore him, and be rude to him, and do what I wanted to do all the time and not consider or compromise at all what he wanted to do. I could act the way he is acting, or I could act like Mommy. To no surprise, he asked me to act like Mommy, and then was quiet the rest of the way home.
Once home the whining started again. He claimed he was bored because he had played with EVERYTHING in his room and it wasn’t fun. So I made suggestions of things he hadn’t yet played with. Then he started stomping around the house. Then he got quiet and looked at me and said “I’ll do whatever you want me to do Mommy. Can I play on the computer now?” No. So I fed him dinner just as Shiny walked in the door. Once he was done, they went downstairs to play a couple games of Cars on the computer. SO not the end of the world.
I eventually got my apology. And I got to share my good day with Shiny. But now I’m left wondering - is it possible to deprogram a drama queen?