If anyone that has no children ever tells you that parenting is (or should be) easy, punch them in the nose and tell them "That's what parenting feels like sometimes." There are always going to be good and bad days, but the worst is when you work so hard to overcome certain behaviors, only to have them regress later on.
Our children have what I like to call "Summer Behavior." This is the behavior they display during the summer months when school is out. Boredom can strike at anytime and I'll be damned if the entire house doesn't have to walk on eggshells as soon as one of the kids gets bored. However, when school begins, some of those silly behaviors go away and the kids seem to be ecstatic that they're back in school and the source of their ire is gone! Woohoo!
Yeah; that's until they have three days off school thanks to the Minnesota Education Something or Another (called MEA up here). Just when we thought the kids had grown out of their summer behavior and are putting those days behind them, they all regress and go back to what they would do during the summer.
It's kind of like watching a bunch of bipolar narcissists playing tag...
All of them are best friends; running around and playing like it's nothing. Then when they're done, they calm down a bit and one of them decides that he or she is bored and is going to go from awesome sibling to pestering brat. He or she does something to anger one of the others, but of course it wasn't his or her fault, it was clearly somebody else's. Or, nothing apparently happened at all because all we get are blank stares and no answers. If everyone isn't playing together happily and following the same basic "rules of play," then one or all starts to want things his or her way and things start to spiral a bit. I would never call it out of control, but it often ends up with yelling, pestering, someone getting in trouble, timeouts, or the "go outside!" exclamation.
When the day is done, Kristen and I like to reflect back on the day, and we're left scratching our heads. "What the hell happened with (insert name here)?" We, of course, were under the assumption that those behaviors were weeks behind us. But I guess not...
Now we have something to look forward to next summer!
Kristen and I don't beat ourselves up about though; instead, we look for better ways to deal with it. We are definitely a "continuous improvement" set of parents who can never seem to break old habits... *sigh* at least we try.
Kristen and I are stark proponents of redirecting anger and annoyance so that it quickly goes away. This is often quite easy with Harper and Willow; but then they're only 5 and (now) 3. It's easy to take a young child's attention away from a conflict and redirect it to something fun. I have an easier time with Harper and Kristen has an easier time with Willow. This household balance works well for us, although there are many times where those roles are switched. The good news is Kristen and I regularly balance each other's attitudes out, allowing our house to remain as sane as possible.
However, when it comes to Riannah and Nolan, both well into their grade school years, redirection is horribly difficult. One thing we do is pull the offender away from the fun and send him or her to his or her room to be alone for awhile. This is (usually) followed-up with an explanation of what they did wrong and life gets back to normal. But this can still be a cumbersome process (thanks to arguing and backtalk), and it's not instantaneous like redirecting a Kindergartener is. Kristen has been trying some new techniques, but it's often difficult to break old habits. I too have been working up the effort to try new things, but breaking that annoyance can be difficult. If we calmly state why we're unhappy and what our children need to do better with, the hope is that these occasions will become a thing of the past.
And of course, they will become a thing of the past because break is over and they go back to school tomorrow! That is, until the next break comes... Ugh!
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