helping eachother calm down
This morning Dutch woke us up at 6:15, hollering. (We can hear her very well, as her bed, in spite of being across the hall and in her bedroom, is only about 15 feet away from our bed, due to the extreme compactness of her apartment.) She wanted me to come in to her room and pick her up. I told her in my best Kind Yet Firm Mom voice that she was more than welcome to come to our bed, but I was not getting up to pick her up. Once I had said that, of course, I couldn't back down, as that would be taking a big step down the slippery slope to Power Dynamic Hell. Fifteen minutes later, when she was still going strong with the screaming and sobbing and yelling and threatening and begging ("I can't walk! My legs don't work! This is making me very upset! I need you to help me calm down! Please come in and pick me up! My body wants me to cry!"), I was seriously regretting establishing that initial position, and Cook had given up on sleeping and gotten up to make coffee. When she finally came to our bed, she brought a book and seemed completely cheerful; once she'd given up on the struggle, she was fine.
Last night she got upset about something (I think because Cook had lifted her into her bed and she had wanted to DO IT HERSELF) and I actually sang for her the scraps I could remember from "My Favorite Things", and she really liked it. Though she then started to cry because it is so sad that sometimes people get bitten by dogs and stung by bees; sometimes you just can't win.
She really seems to feel these tempestuous emotions - she's experimenting with them, yes, but she also genuinely feels devastated by our failure to do what she wants us to do, or crushed by the prospect of bee stings. Her sadness and anger build up, and she doesn't have the ability, or often the will, to stop the buildup. I don't know how to move her along toward a place where she can bring herself back to stability. I think that being three just means living in a stormy world, kind of like being thirteen. She's kind of a big kid and kind of a baby, and all her calibrations are off.
Last night she got upset about something (I think because Cook had lifted her into her bed and she had wanted to DO IT HERSELF) and I actually sang for her the scraps I could remember from "My Favorite Things", and she really liked it. Though she then started to cry because it is so sad that sometimes people get bitten by dogs and stung by bees; sometimes you just can't win.
She really seems to feel these tempestuous emotions - she's experimenting with them, yes, but she also genuinely feels devastated by our failure to do what she wants us to do, or crushed by the prospect of bee stings. Her sadness and anger build up, and she doesn't have the ability, or often the will, to stop the buildup. I don't know how to move her along toward a place where she can bring herself back to stability. I think that being three just means living in a stormy world, kind of like being thirteen. She's kind of a big kid and kind of a baby, and all her calibrations are off.
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