Yesterday, I was exhausted, and sat down on the couch to feed the baby. That turned into taking a nap on the couch while feeding the baby. So, to test how tired I really was, the 11-year-old decides to use lipstick to draw me a mustache and unibrow. She took pictures, and posted them on Facebook.
We’re now in the “Holy crap, Mom is gonna get me” waiting for the perfect revenge phase of the operation. Any ideas are welcome.
OMG - that is brilliant. I wish I was auntie to your kids. You could chastise her. I could reward her. 
Oh SNORT - I’d send her to COLLEGE!!! 
Yeah, it’s quite funny. As is watching her became more and more paranoid, waiting for me to get her back…
The tantrums. My 3yo loves to play with the iPad, until he gets frustrated. I see him get mad and toss the iPad on the couch, roughly. So I take it away, and tell him he knows he’s not supposed to thow the iPad, because it can break.
WAAAAAAAA!
I WANT IPAD!
No, you’re getting mad, and you can break it
WE CAN BY ANOTHER ONE AT THE IPAD STORE
No, they’re very expensive, we can’t get a new one if you break this one
WAAAAAAAA!
I WANT IPAD!
Repeat about 20 times… He gets quieter.
Can I have iPad?
What do you want to do with it?
Throw it.
:smack:
The boy (almost three) no longer sleeps though the night.
He’s up anywhere from once to six times.
Comes rocketing into the room, and is up and into the bed far faster that you would think he could move. You have to let him lay for about 30 seconds, then take him back.
When you ask WHY - all he says is “I got up!”
Sigh.
He can also defeat any child lock placed on the door in approximately 30 seconds.
We could swap the lock from our bedroom door and just install it backwards, but then he would pound on the door and wail - waking up the other child.
I really hope he grows out of this, and fast.
The girl (almost 6) never stops making noise. Some of it is random chatter, and stupid questions (“what’s 6 plus 5? What’s two hundred plus 1?”) and the rest of the time is just random noise.
Here’s what’s driving me batty about my 10yo daughter…
Talking. She talks too much, and has no desire to attempt to say the right thing at the right time.
For example, assume mom and I are fighting but, trying to be civil, we’re not talking.
"Why aren’t you talking? Are y’all fighting? Why do y’all fight? What’s it about? Is it about me?.. " & etc.
Now, perhaps this is the difference between being an only child (her) and being the youngest of 4-8 kids (depending upon who my Dad was married to at the time), but I would never, EVER goad my parents about their fight. Hell, I knew enough just by looking at my fathers jawline whether or not this was a good time to open my mouth about any subject, much less try to see what he’s pissed off about.
Sophia? Hasn’t a fuckin’ clue.
She also doesn’t have many friends which bothers the hell out of her. I tell her why she doesn’t have many friends, but she ignores me and does the same damn thing over and over again… eventually wondering why this friend is leaving her too.
Well, Sophia, I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again:
But the talking… it’s fuckin’ insane.
My middle son is just finishing his junior year in a high school for brainiacs in NYC. The only requirement for admission is a high score on a challenging test. You can be a lousy student with crummy grades but, if you’ve got an extraordinary IQ, you’re in. 70% of the student body is Asian. He was proud to be accepted to this prestigious school but hates his parents (mostly Dad) for having high expectations.
First year- procrastinated on assignments until the last moment and then handed them in late for a lower grade. Also, decided to make the “druggie crowd” his best friends.
Second year- procrastination gets even worse- some assignments don’t get done, period. However, hormones overcome resentments and he finds himself a girlfriend who hangs with the “speech and debate” and “model UN” crowd. Big improvement in friends. Trades drugs for sex. Barely passes most courses, but seems happier. We like the girlfriend.
This year - Starts out like last year but then gets overwhelmed by all the work he is expected to do. Procrastination turns to obstinate refusal to do any assignments. As he incurs the wrath of his teachers (and peers he has screwed on “group” assignments) he starts cutting the classes that are uncomfortable. This progresses to refusal to attend school at all most days. Inevitable failure results and it is OUR fault of course. Summer school is scheduled but will he go? Will he do work there? (Things with girlfriend going well - looks like love.)
His father (who adores him beyond reason) becomes so enraged at his refusal to respond to even the gentlest attempt to discuss the problem (or possible solutions), that they actually come to blows one night while I’m at work. Dad tells me that I must fix the problem on my own. He has lost all credibility and cannot control his anger. I LONG for the days of toddler my miscreants. Don’t get me wrong. Horrible Teen is a wonderful person in every other way and I’m talking with guidance counselors and doctors to find help for him. We are looking for a good therapist for him and/or the family but, even that, is no guaranteed cure (to say nothing of expensive and a long term kind of thing rather than a timely solution.) It would be so much easier if I didn’t LIKE him so much (love is a given but not liking.) BTW, we have tried the tough love approach with only fleeting improvement. We may have to resort to that for our own sanity but are looking for a softer way at the moment.
Does anybody have any recommendations for good adolescent and/or family therapists in NYC?
Any suggestions at all (willing to try anything)?
Thank g*d his brothers are stable for the moment. Thanks for letting me vent.
My baby, at 32 weeks gestation, does not like fetal monitoring. When they put the monitor or ultrasound scanner on my belly, she moves away from it. I had to get an ultrasound this morning because she wouldn’t cooperate in the doctor’s office. Can the “No No No” phase start this early?
Mine is almost 10, and the talking makes me nuts. I keep reminding myself that it won’t be long before I wish that she would give me more than a grunt and a shoulder shrug, but that doesn’t help when the fifteenth, “Hey mom! Guess what!” in 5 minutes assaults my ears. I’ve tried telling her that she can just launch in with the story, especially if I am the only other person in the room, but then I just sound like a bitch.
She also is like a dog with a bone when it comes to wishes or plans. She asked me no fewer than 4 times the other day when she could get a cell phone, then wandered off to ask her Dad the same thing. Her big obsession is bags. Backpacks, duffel bags, messenger bags. It’s crazy. The last bag she really really wanted needed was addicted to was a duffel bag from Land’s End. She saved up for it and we got it. She got 2 different backpacks last year. Now she’s eyeing a messenger bag for next school year—despite the fact that school just got out 2 days ago.
In her world, there is now and not now…and can we please have it now?
My kids got into a huge fight yesterday on the way home about whether or not my little girl’s head was attached to her neck. My son contended that, in fact, it was attached. My daughter, being 2.5, had to “respectfully” disagree by screaming “NO! It not attacked!” My son, 6, always has to have the last word, so he was snarling that, of course it was attached! Attached! Not attacked!
I was torn between extreme annoyance at the stupidity of the argument and trying hard not to snort with laughter. I suppose I’m just lucky no one tried to prove their side of the story.
Yeah, that would have been bad. That’s really funny, though.
I feel your pain. Because of the twins and their complicated little lives I had about fifteen monitoring sessions, and for most of them they couldn’t get both heartbeats at once for more than a few minutes, and they need ten minutes of uninterrupted monitoring for the charts. I spent many hours on the table, getting increasingly annoyed.
The annoyance was mostly because the monitoring is supposed to check heart rate and movement. They moved so much they couldn’t keep them on the damn monitors! They’re fine! Aaargh!
They got me out of bed at six the day of my c-section to do one last round of monitoring, and since they’d had me up until eleven the previous night trying to monitor I got surly and refused, and asked them to check with my doctor. I knew I was having surgery in a couple of hours, and there was no bloody reason to strap me down again.
I hate the heart rate monitors.
10 year old daughter is getting those mood swings. Making sure she gets protein and giving her two fish oil vitamins in the morning helps a lot, but it’s still pretty obnoxious to ask her to go do something and she immediately scrunches up her face and goes “ehhhhhhhhhhh.”
4.5 year old son likes to call everything he doesn’t like stupid.
The kids are generally really good kids and they get along very well. Except, they are brother and sister and evidently there must be some ingrained genetic thing that compells them to fight each other. She’s way bigger than him but will let him hit her in the face and then cry. He gets knocked over and cries.
Just the other day my wife was talking to him about hurting his sister. “How many times have you scrached her face?”
He shrugs “I dunno, a million.”
Mine are similar, although it is the 7-year-old boy that is larger (by a few inches and 20 pounds!) than his 9-year-old sister. She’s scrappy, though. My “favorite” is when I hear her hit him and then she immediately yells, “I didn’t mean that!!”
my two oldest are long gone. However, I have DD15 left.
She is a debater. Everything is parsed and contextualized. She is just like me… the little bitch 
Dawdling. Oh. my. God. the dawdling. It is sucking my life away 3 minutes at a time.
Now and then,a s I stand there holding her toothbrush and waiting for her to make her way seven steps across the hallway, I hear that great speech from Bull Durham:
Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers?
Skip: Lollygaggers!!! What’s our record, boy?
Larry: Eight and sixteen.
Skip: 8-16! How did we get there?
Larry: It’s a miracle.
Skip: It’s a miracle!
My son is 3.5. There are a few things that drive me nuts.
He is incredibly impatient. Yesterday, he had an appointment so we left the house a bit later. He was standing at the gate with fifteen minutes to go because he wanted to leave. I told him, we’ll leave in fifteen minutes. Two minutes later, he starts yelling that he wants to go and that it has been fifteen minutes. If he is hungry and wants a snack in the car, he keeps demanding one after I tell him that no, we don’t have anything and that we are almost home.
He’s been acting out at the daycare, because his best friend just moved to another school. He’s been getting in fights and has been fairly aggressive. We’ve been talking to him about it and he’ll behave for a week, but it starts up again. He told me the other night, that he wanted to invite his friend to his birthday party. I told him that I would invite him, but that they live far away, and he probably won’t be able to come. My son told me that he didn’t want to have a birthday party if his friend can’t come. 
Soooooo… the Caffeine Addict has an impatient child… Hmmmmmm
Thank you. I will remember this in similar situations, and it may improve my sanity.
Three is a brutal year. We nearly killed Gnat when he was three. I have a very long, very funny thread about it which I can’t search for right now because the boys are shouting behind me, but it’s called something like “Are all three year olds psycho or are we just lucky?”.
Why can’t they share the watermelon? There’s a whole watermelon!