time out
It’s just a phase…
Too much attention? Or not enough?
M
y child—who’s an only—has been pretty rude lately. Baby talking, talking back, yelling and throwing fits, and so forth. In many ways it’s par for the course for an almost-5-year-old. In many other ways I need it to end as soon as possible. As is also par for the course with parenting, the more you read online about what’s wrong with your child, the less you wish you would have. Much of the unofficial research we’ve been doing presents us with one common theme: she’s trying to get attention. On one hand, this means the problem is with us since we’re (evidently) not giving her enough. On the other hand, she’s an only child, so we often try to NOT shower her with attention. We’ve all seen sad, neglected children acting out because negative attention is better than none at all. We’ve all also seen spoiled, rotten children acting out because they get so much attention they believe they’re the only person in the world who matters. So, Internet, which one is my child? I realize the true answer—for me and most other people, probably—is somewhere in the middle. And that sucks because there doesn’t ever seem to be clear answers for people who fall in the middle. Just like when I try online diagnostics for my kid’s rash or bug bite, it always ends in her probable death, when I try online diagnostics for my child’s behavior problems, it seems to always end in something along the lines of ‘she’s a sociopath.’ So, being very confident my child is definitely not a sociopath I’m left to my own devices. Of course, some of this is my fault. Children’s behavior is almost always SOME level of reflection of their parents’ parenting. I’ll own this. I’m too often distracted and busy. I need to be more patient. I need to set my work
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| RMPARENT
LEA HANSON
aside. I can do all these things and my child is still, well, 5 years old. Far before I had my own kid a friend said something like, “Just remember, everything (EVERYTHING) is a phase.” So, right now I’m holding onto that pretty tightly. I know deep down my child is a good kid. Whatever that means. We take great care of her. We listen to her, we read her a million
books, we play with her. We give her rules. And, we most often have lots of fun together. She’s got a sassy personality; no one’s denying that. It’s just that I’m appreciating it less lately. I just hope I don’t need to wait 15 years before I think her sassiness is cool again. All I want is a list of things to do or not to do. Alas, if only parenting were that easy.