(no subject)

[the_rck]

Christmas ended with Cordelia melting down and Scott blowing up. The day had been too long all around, and neither of them had had much sleep. It's very weird to be the mellowest person in the family. I'm just sorry that it only happens when this sort of situation happens.

Santa brought a Wii for Scott and Cordelia. I'd never have thought of it because I don't understand the appeal at all and wouldn't have considered the expense justified. They both love it, though, so it seems to have been a good call. On Christmas, though, the Wii was Scott's newest toy, the one he had to take with him and show off. That meant that he spent a lot of time with the three kids while all the other adults were elsewhere. The kids were not good at taking turns or at leaving each other alone while one of them was playing with the Wii.

I suggested leaving not long after dinner, probably about 5:30. Scott said that he had to let the kids play more with the Wii because he'd promised. Cordelia was running around and getting progressively wilder (more tired and more wound up). She kept demanding more food, but all there was available then was cookies. I don't think the sugar helped. I suspect she was also dehydrated because drinking anything would have required that she stop moving.

I think that, for Cordelia, there was also some jealousy involved. The family Christmas structure is set up in a way that I dislike in that Scott's family gathers and exchanges presents relatively early in the day. Scott's sister's husband's family arrives later in the day and does their exchange immediately. The other grandparents always give Cordelia a nice gift, but they give her cousins, their actual grandchildren, several presents. Cordelia ends up wandering around and hoping desperately that there will be more for her. I think I'm going to have to talk to Scott's sister about that next year because I don't think it's something a child her age is going to deal well with. In another five to seven years, maybe, but not now.

At seven thirty, Scott finally decided that we should start packing up the car. We got everything out to the car before Cordelia came upstairs again. At that point, she freaked out because we'd packed her presents. She wanted to carry one particular item, a Barbie backpack, to the car herself. She actually threw herself to the floor and kicked and screamed. Eventually, she calmed down enough to play more with her cousin. They hid in the basement playroom in an effort to keep us from taking Cordelia home.

When we got Cordelia and her coat and boots all in one place, she kicked and screamed and generally made getting that stuff on her impossible. Eventually, we took her out to the car without it. Scott then decided to try to make her put things on right next to the car. Cordelia kept bargaining and saying that she'd put things on if we put her down and then trying to run. Eventually, she kicked Scott in the face as he tried to wrestle her into the car.

At that point, Scott lost it and threatened to send all her Christmas presents back. Every single one. I wanted to smack him. We needed a penalty for misbehavior. We didn't need a penalty of apocalyptic proportions, guaranteed to piss off most of our relatives. Cordelia had been screaming and fighting long enough that she couldn't stop herself. She had no idea how to calm down. Once we got her into the car and got her to put her coat on, she still cried hard for about fifteen more minutes.

None of this was helped by Scott being absolutely convinced that we had to move the car so that other people could leave. He forgot that everybody who was left arrived after we did and had parked on the street while we were at the end of the driveway. The only thing we were parking in was our brother-in-law's truck.

I didn't argue with Scott while we were struggling with Cordelia. The last thing we needed right then was for the parents to start bickering. I waited until Cordelia was in bed to point out that going from 'we're not happy with you' to 'we're taking away everything because we're not happy with you' at a point when the child is hysterical is a good way to get stuck having to carry out a penalty that will punish us rather horribly (and that, in this case, would have put a huge burden on me as he wasn't going to be home the next day). Scorched earth does not make a good parenting policy.

Scott told me that the meltdown wrecked Christmas for him. I was surprised by that. I mean, five year olds, especially tired, wound up five year olds, do have tantrums. It was a miserable experience all around, but it was the sort of thing that does happen with kids. Parents have to remain at least somewhat calm and come up with reasonable repercussions. Better yet, we have to keep an eye on situations and get out before the munchkin is that exhausted.

I got the two of them to talk the next day, and there were apologies in both directions. Cordelia did lose one new toy for a while. I probably would have taken away more for longer, but I was leaving it up to Scott. I think he was ashamed of overreacting.

Of course, I have no idea how I'd have responded if I'd been on my own with Cordelia acting like that. Scott could pick her up and take her to the car. I can't do that. The last time she threw a tantrum on me, she ended up grounded for nearly a week (losing one day at a time). That was September or October.

Comments

[kyrielle]

Messy all around, it sounds like. I'm glad it sorted out at the end. And (IMO) it's not entirely bad for children to learn that parents are human too, and can overreact - especially if the parent can and does later apologize and sort it out. But what a miserable situation all around.

That way of handling the gift exchange sounds pretty awful, and designed to create jealousy, yes. :/

[the_rck]

With the gift exchange, it's largely a matter of who arrives when. The other grandparents aren't willing to arrive more than an hour before dinner while Scott's part of the family traditionally has brunch (which we always miss because we have a drive and our own morning routine at home). I think that it might work better to delay the opening of presents for Scott's part of the family until the other grandparents have arrived. The cousins would still get more, but it might be a trifle less obvious.

With young children, there's a lot of child rearing advice about not altering stated positions and always carrying through with promises and punishments, basically being consistent. Cordelia's starting to be old enough to understand renegotiation without assuming that it means that she can get her way if she just pushes hard enough. I hope.

I can definitely understand Scott getting upset after getting kicked in the face (I didn't see where she kicked him, so I'd thought she'd gotten him considerably lower down, just going by his reaction). It's hard to have to be the adult, the sane, measured and responsible person.

[kyrielle]

I've heard the bit about carrying through, but I've also heard the point that if the promised punishment is too extreme, owning up to it and fixing it is a better lesson than going ahead with it.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Ow ow ow. That sounds really sucky. Leslie has been having a few meltdowns, too, including a couple on Christmas, but there were no kicks to the face. She (and her brother) went off with her Dad after that, so I don't know how well she's done with the Partons.

But, yeah, giving back ALL the presents would not be a good punishment. Sequestering them, yeah.

[the_rck]

I didn't see the kick in the face. It moved too fast for me to process. I just knew Scott suddenly got a lot angrier and said something about no kicking and made the huge threat. Based on his reaction, I was afraid she'd caught him hard considerably lower down than his face.

If I hadn't been wanting to get far, far away from both of them, I might have suggested other punishments. Of course, I was also pretty sure that Cordelia was beyond hearing what we were saying.

Taking her out of the house was necessary, I think. The cousin near her age was pulling on her, urging her to keep fighting to stay and generally making everything worse. I'm not so sure that keeping her in the driveway was wise. Scott was afraid to shut her in the car, though. ::shakes head:: Bad options all around.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah -- gift exchange. That sucks. We've got a similar situation, in that we have friends who do a gift exchange/holiday party thing with both friends and family there. While the kids/friends get a few presents, the family gets a lot more (particularly since there are now two sets of cousins and grandparents there, usually), and it does make the kids feel left out. (And, hell, me too, some years. :-/)

[the_rck]

I think I'm going to suggest that we hold off on all gift opening until everyone's present. Cordelia gets the same number of gifts from her aunts and uncles and from Scott's parents as her two cousins do. Opening those at the same time that the other two are opening their presents from the other side of the family might distract her from the disparity for another year or two. (Eventually, she's going to reach the age of counting and comparing. I'll be irritated by that because the number of gifts isn't the point.) I think there's got to be a way around it.

Or maybe we could leave earlier, right after dinner. Scott may oppose the idea, but I think it would be a good one. If we planned to leave no later than, say, six, the bulk of the gift exchange on that side could be done after we left. It would be logistically more complicated, but I think it could be done. It would also get us home early enough to have some time to wind down at home rather than having to go directly to trying to get Cordelia to bed.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

What a sucky situation. It sounds like you made the right choices--and the next day proves it.

[the_rck]

Everybody survived. That's the important thing.

[cherydactyl.livejournal.com]

I'm an echo today, but that definitely sucks about how the gift exchange is handled. I can understand wanting to open gifts early...it give you a way to entertain the kids, but the later dynamic is really not okay. Maybe you could suggest a method by which each child opens one present earlier in the day and then the rest wait? There's got to be a way to manage it, but it will take dialogue and honesty.

As for the response to tantrums and punishments, I totally agree that sudden apocalypse is counter-productive, and rather similar to Codelia's tantrums themselves. Her responses are pretty predictable (the hiding, and the needing one specific item) and should be manageable with a little forethought.

[the_rck]

I think that Scott failed to realize how exhausted he was. I certainly didn't realize it. I find the idea that the meltdown 'ruined Christmas' only explicable if he had no resources left. Meltdowns are miserable, but they happen. I suspect that Scott had some idea about wanting everything to be just so to make up for the misery of being sick repeatedly during the last couple of months.

My expectations for Christmas day were very low. I expected to be cranky, bored and hungry. That meant that anything pleasant seemed more pleasant.

[cherydactyl.livejournal.com]

You're probably right that his reserves were low, which makes the parallel to a tantrum even more correct in my view. I say this in the knowledge that the way to prevent tantrums successfully starts way before they happen. In his case, I know it's really hard to recover from illness considering how grueling and variable his schedule is. I hope I'm not sounding like a hard ass, because definitely he has my fullest sympathy.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

*hug*

[the_rck]

::hugs back::