As Stubborn as a 4-Year Old

You've heard the old saying, "as stubborn as a mule." Well, I'd like to add a new one; "as stubborn as a 4-year old." With our fourth child being 3-years old, I'm realizing that all children seem to go through this extreme stubbornness that develops when they're 3, blossoms when they're 4, and begins to fade when they're 5. Not that it truly goes away, but it seems to peak at the age of 4. Lucky us; we have two more children that will go through the 4-year old stubbornness.

Sometimes I find myself becoming quite frustrated with the bouts of extreme stubbornness. This makes those occasions difficult to overcome without letting your child's behavior get the best of you, but sometimes it gets to a point where you literally don't know what to do without giving in. This could be something as simple as "pick up your toys please" resulting with the "no, you do it" response.  This can go on for hours as this behavior doesn't relent regarding that particular situation. You could finally give in and just pick up after your child, or make sure they understand how you don't appreciate the behavior.

I'm going to say this quite plainly; the former decision, if it's the regular decision, will only lead to a life of misery as the child gets older. They will become more defiant because they know that their defiance leads to you giving in.

The latter decision, while harder to deal with, can lead to that fading of the stubbornness when your child reaches the age of 5. Enforce some type of penalty (for us it's the loss of today's reward chart sticker and the loss of dessert) so that your child knows that behavior is not acceptable and you won't relent.

It's been stated in many sources that when children reach 3 / 4, they begin testing their parents. Stubbornness is one of those wonderful tests. This is what we're dealing with when it comes to Willow. She too is on the really awesome reward chart and she too can lose her sticker that day. This way, she knows there's no reward for her that day when she behaves that way. She also learns that Kristen and I are not push-overs and we don't tolerate this type of behavior in terms of "okay, I'll just do it for you then." Nope; not I. I love my children to death, but there's no way in hell I'm going to give in to their ridiculous behavior, no matter how much their pouting makes me giggle.

Five minutes of holding your grounds while your children are in that 3-5 range makes for weeks and weeks of not having to deal with it when they get older. That's how I see it.

Those Wonderful School Breaks!

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!