Last Friday, I was trying to clean my house. Hopefully, we all know where this is going because every time we try to be good mothers and try to be productive, right? Oh no, it's only me....well I'll still share my story.
So I am upstairs cleaning my kitchen, vacuuming, and mopping the kitchen. I go downstairs to change some laundry and put this away and notice that Aiden is now able to get into our third bedroom (where my craft stuff and their craft stuff is). He has gotten out our paint station and the paint. I put it away, grateful that he didn't open the bottles. Thirty minutes later, Kyle comes upstairs. He has paint on his hands and pants. I realize that Aiden had taken the red paint bottle into the play room and I didn't notice it missing when I put the rest away.
I was not very angry. Although his reasoning was, "I wanted to know what was in it." That excuse did not hold water, he knew what was in it.
Then I found out, it was not only on the Costco sized bear downstairs, but also on my carpet. I thought maybe a few drops, but in reality it was a huge amount of paint. I was livid. After cleaning with resolve and water for 30 minutes it looked like this....
I sent out a desperate text to all the mother's of little boys that I knew...help. My landlord is vicious and with a huge pink stain in the middle of the carpet I knew was going to be a big part of our massive deposit.
A good friend from down the street brought me some oxyclean. After saturating the spot and leaving it for about 45 minutes, I re-tackled the cleaning. It was tedious work, but it is now just a slight slight tinge of pink if you know where to look. Hopefully it will fly under the radar at checkout.
I was so livid. I told Kyle multiple times that I was extremely angry at him. I even told him that it would be a good idea for him to stay upstairs away from mommy while she worked on the stain. She was too angry. However, I never raised my voice or yelled at him. That was a huge step for me. Needless to say, this project ended up taking my cleaning time.
When I was done, I had Kyle empty his piggy bank. It has about $30 in it that he has been saving for Legos. I had him put it in another jar to give to me and Evan because he was going to cost us part of our deposit and for the time it took to take care of it.
I felt very mean when I was doing that, I still wonder if it was the right punishment. I haven't decided what we really will do with the money, but I thought it was a good learning experience for him. Bad choices cost. When we were done, he asked me very sweetly, "are you still mad at me?" I told him that I wasn't, which I honestly meant, but that I did want him to know how serious what he did was. Unfortunately, that was the beginning of what has been a very long week with that kid.
Anyone have any good parenting advice? Kyle goes through weeks of fabulous, kind, polite behavior and then through weeks of obnoxious, rebellious, rude, demanding, crying, wetting his pants, aggressive (he has drawn blood on Aiden several times this week) behavior. I just don't know what to do during that time, because I know that he has it in him to be good. He knows the difference.
3 comments:
HA! You're definitely not the only one! I'm struggling with Sofie right now too, worse than ever, so I have no advice. But my sister recommended a book called Positive Discipline for Preschoolers. Worked well for her kids I guess. I'm only a few pages into it, so we'll see! Good luck!!
Halle does the same thing, where we will have weeks and months of great and then weeks, and sometimes months of difficult behaviors. And, I also have a large red spot on the kids carpet from Halle getting into my paint a couple of years ago. I didn't try oxyclean, it is still a bright red spot, but luckily we weren't charged when we moved out (the first time, before we moved back in). Anyway, I have no recommendations, but I can commiserate with you.
Hey, I didn't get a text for carpet cleaning advice! I have a little boy! Only one, though; maybe I needed plural boys. My only further advice would have been borrowing a steam cleaner from someone; getting the painty water up out of the carpet. That's awful, though. I hate that pressure and worry about the deposit. Of course, I usually don't even expect the deposit back, even though I think we take unusually good care of our rentals; landlords can be so lame.
Dane has been going through a rudeness phase, too (I call it a phase because it helps me hope it's temporary). Some days it's okay and some days, not so much. I think he learns some attitude at school. I just try to be consistent in my reactions. I am impressed that you were able to keep your cool even when angry--that's a huge success!
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