Who writes those positive parenting manuals, anyway?
I employed every single parenting technique I abhor today as Julia and I went yet another round in the now-daily nap battle. I ignored her, I instructed her without discussion, I hissed through gritted teeth at her, I yelled at her and I forcibly returned her to her room. When she woke Evan with her complaining, I finally just left her there crying and walked away. As I soothed Evan back to sleep, I felt like just about the worst mother in the world. And do you know what the end result of all of that awful parenting was? Julia is now sleeping peacefully, taking the nap she so desperately needed and so vehemently fought.
I'm completely unclear on the lesson I'm supposed to take from all of this. When I practice positive parenting, the kid resists and rebels. When I pull the "crazy mom" crap, she does what I want her to do. So what, pray tell, am I supposed to do at nap time tomorrow?
posted by Rebecca @ 2:51 PM
1 Comments:
When I "hissed" at my daughter just this very morning (after all those other positive techniques failed), she stopped what she was doing wrong, started doing what I'd asked her, and said to me "We're not having a good morning, are we?"
Yeah, Zoe, you got that right.
Secondly, in all my infinite wisdom the two months experience I have over you (November/January, right?), I've found that Zoe puts on this "nap strike" thing fairly regularly: one week of nap strikes, then right back to the routine of napping for several weeks more. As far as I'm concerned, she can "nap strike" until she's six, for all I care...I'll still try, try, try again to get her to nap ;-)
I totally understand...
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