A Sigh of Relief

Listening to: Elder child whining, again.
Mood: Content

We have been having a bit of a difficult time around our house as of late. Most of this difficulty is revolving around my elder daughter, who shall be referred to as AA girl in the rest of this post. You’ll understand this in a minute.

For those who don’t know, AA is 4.4 years old. We also have a 3.5 month old, referred to as Squishy. As AA has been the only child for her 4 short years on earth, she had a reasonably difficult time adjusting to Squishy’s arrival. We were prepared for it though, and it wasn’t really that bad.

So the really intense time started when I had to bring both my girls to the pediatrician last Friday. Unfortunately for them (and indeed, me too) both girls needed shots. When I was a young girl, I had a severe phobia of shots. I could work myself into a panic attack just thinking about getting one. Unfortunately, AA inherited this terror. She had a rather traumatic experience at the Dr.’s office, partly due to her fear and partly due to some insensitive people at the office – but that’s a whole different rant. Since then, she has been the most angry, hateful little girl imaginable. I felt rather like we had slid back into the terrible twos, but with more tricks up her sleeve to hurl at me. She has always behaved in this manner, but not quite so rude and angry. I had really run out of ideas as to how to deal with AA too. On top of this, she is home all day right now for 2 weeks for Easter break. Hubby would come home at night and find me near tears, a rare event indeed, from dealing with both a demanding, fussy, infant and a four year old who argued and was extremely rude and defiant all day.

I finally turned to the internet to find some help or support in how to help my daughter deal with her anger. I happened to come across a page on difficult children. I read through the page on defiance first, but it really didn’t seem to fit my daughter all that well. I moved on to a page on Active Aggressive (AA) children. It was like the heavens opened up with the Hallelujah chorus. That was my daughter – to a T. It was such a relief to not worry that her demeanor was a result of me being a horrible parent. It was a huge sigh of relief. I also found some parenting tips on how to best deal with these types of children, and it has made a night and day difference in my daughter’s behavior. I had some adjustments to make too. It hasn’t been the easiest thing to accept – everyone thinks they know how they should deal with discipline – but sometimes it’s great to have an instruction manual that helps you deal with your type of child. In the past, it had been a constant source of frustration for hubby and I, because we simply ran out of ideas on how to deal with her constant energy and attitude. There really is no professional child person telling you, don’t worry, this method or that method will work, just give it a little time. Instead, we were just growing more and more frustrated as we flipped through ways of dealing with behaviors. It’s kind of sad though. Had I known this information, I could have dealt with some of the stresses in a much more productive manner.

I’ll continue to update you on how it’s going with AA. She’s got a long road ahead of her, but it’s a good one filled with possibilities. I was an AA child myself and I turned out okay. Hopefully her childhood will be even better than mine because her father and I have this info.
Becky