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Help For Teaching Kids Self-Control
Posted by Jeff on February 6, 2008 216 views Comments (View Comments)Tonight our son was perfect after coming home from daycare, maybe it was the fact that Mommy stopped off and picked up Chick-Fil -A on the way home with our kids. Whatever it was he was an angel until he had fallen asleep. About 20 minutes after him being asleep he came walking downstairs and said really nice, “Mommy I didn’t get to play a game”. When Mommy replied, “Oh sweetie, it’s bedtime and the games are ‘closed for the the night’,” our son went from angel to demon in a second. Why is that? What makes a child do a complete 180 and go from nice to angered so quickly? It’s like a lightswitch!
I had a hellish day at work and my wife didn’t have a much better one but still we were very pleasant this evening, a first in a while, it was a blessing! We thought the night was going so perfectly, even giving us time to do other things, me catch up on Lost Season3 (since I’m behind one season) and she needed to take care of some work.
So shortly after 9pm is when our son began his first outburst and meltdown about playing a game. A computer game…not really, but like a Diego or Dora interactive learning game (i’ll justify it as that!). So anyway, I went in and Mommy stood along the wall. We kept telling him that the game was “closed”. That works all the time at his school/daycare. But of course, why would that simple term work for us at night!? Finally after about 45 minutes of ‘sidetracking’ him — where Daddy does things to make him laugh, focus on something else, did he finally calm down enough to fall asleep. One ‘game’ I played with him was Choose a Number, where I asked him to pick a number between 1 and 5. It seemed to work. At least for a while. Anyway, cutting this short, he did fall asleep.
An hour later was the second attack on Mommy and Daddy by our son. My wife was asleep and I was just beginning to relax and watch Lost. I assumed that his waking up was related to some sort of illness, like an ear infection. He was tugging his ear and putting his finger in it this evening. Usually that is what he does when his ear hurts.
Anyway, this is a huge lead-in to another blog post I located tonight in a search for my sanity and answers to “WHY KIDS WAKE UP SCREAMING!”
Here is a good post on another blog site. it is about teaching kids self-control.
Help For Teaching Kids Self-Control
As parents we often react to your child’s misbehavior or emotional outburst by an emotional overreaction ourselves. This can make you feel out of control also. Tensions escalate and soon the whole situation becomes a much bigger issue then it really should have.
