So I asked the Venerable “Dear WeaselMomma” over at Dad-Blogs for some help with my increasingly Tyrannical 4yr old. Her advice was sound, but I feel like I must expand the scenario. In her defence the examples I gave of this behaviour were simple ones and her suggestions for dealing with them were good, but I’ve already exhausted those tactics. So let’s set the stage.

For those of you who are new to BBDR and now that my archives are lost in cyberspace I have two girls known affectionately as ThingOne and ThingTwo. Both are strong willed, independent, beautiful girls. ThingTwo has had more of a battle with her young life. She has been saddled with a host of life-threatening allergies and because of that has had a very different first four years than her elder sibling, and we have parented her quite differently as well.

ThingOne was in a day-home at 1, A day-care program at 2, Pre-school, and then Kindergarden, as most children of working parents are. ThingTwo has never been anywhere without myself, my wife, or more recently my mother with her, supervising her every move. She has never been in a normal toddler/pre-school type situation. The short-lived Day-Care facility she attended (with my mother) lasted only two months at the end of which various factors dictated the facility was not adequately equipped to handle her unique situation. So, she has been protected, from everything, her entire life.

This has lead to the situation I currently find myself in where she does not know how to deal with NO for an answer. I know that this is not unusual, and that most children her age go through some form of this. ThingTwo is not your usual 4yr old and that is partly nature’s fault, and partly ours. She has always been catered to differently because of her allergies, and we have had to make huge life changes because of them. We had to rid our house of Dairy, Peanuts, Shellfish, and a few random other things that seemed to cause allergic reactions. Now Shellfish, whatever, I don’t care for it, but dairy and peanuts, milk and peanut butter sandwiches!? These were big things! The first year after we learned of her allergies were hell, we spent every day terrified that something we were not yet aware of would land our child in the emergency room, or worse. So we did what any parents would do, we protected her, from everything.

But she’s older now, and needs friends, needs to interact with other children, needs to see more than her own backyard. The problem is, most other parents, don’t get it. They don’t get that feeding their kid yogurt, in a public play place, and not wiping their kids’ hands, and that kid touching the slide with his unwashed hands, and my kid touching the slide, ……could kill my kid. Yes, I said kill my kid. It’s that simple and that easy. We don’t go anywhere without benadryl and two Epi-Pens. Thankfully we’ve only needed the Epi-pen once. Let me tell you a baby, jacked up on adrenaline, is not a pretty sight.

I’m a pretty laid-back guy, I like reason, logic, and rolling with the punches.  I worked at a summer camp for under-priveledged boys for almost a decade, and dealt with a lot of crap, both figuratively and literally. I thought I had this parenting thing well in hand, second kid and all that. I have never been so man-handled in my life! This little being is a force of nature, like a hurricane. She is relentless, and will not stop until she gets what she wants. Case in point, the other night she convinced SugarMomma to make cupcakes, after dinner, before bedtime, before SugarMomma even realised what she was doing. It went something like this.

T2: Momma, let’s make cupcakes.

Momma: No.

T2: FINE! I’ll do it myself!

(T2 opens the baking cupboard, looks, lingers….)

T2: (with fluttering eyelashes and twinkling eyes) Momma,……how do I make cupcakes?

And you know the rest.

ThingTwo has willpower that would make Thor look like the Cowardly Lion. She’s had to endure a lot in her short life which has fueled the intensity of her temper, and she’s used to people jumping to help her with anything she needed or wanted for fear that something “else” might be motivationg the emotions. She has little sense of authority, and there is little that you can use as leverage. So we are now entering the “Bootcamp” phase of swift and definite consequences, which is as tough or tougher on the parent than it is on the child. It takes commitment and resolve. The time between instruction and consequence is getting shorter, and the grace period for the “Please, I’ll listen, I’ll cooperate now!” is almost non-existent. For Example:

1. Ask nicely. > If ignored >

2. Remind nicely. > If ignored >

3. Drop the Hammer.

BBD: T2, time to get jammies on.

T2 ignores BBD.

BBD: T2+middle+last name, it. is. time. to get your jammies on.

T2: NO! (followed by giggles and evasive manoeuvres)

BBD: Get your jammies on now or there will be no stories.

T2: NO! (followed by more of the same.)

BBD: Fine. NO Stories.

Which if I’m on my game I stick to it,  is followed by 20 minutes to an hour and a half of hysterical begging, crying, screaming, growling, door slamming, toothbrush throwing, and sobbing, depending on how tired she is when this all starts. The next day, she remembers, a week later…not usually.

We are having to find ways to make the consequences relevant, not only to what she is doing, but also something that is relevant  to her. The consequence has to mean something to her so that when you pull out the “Remember what happened last time” it means something and she remembers. This is the challenging part, and so, the battle continues.