One mom-friend who has two little girls that go to school with Sophia. Usually they are in a uniform but this particular day was free dress day. Her daughter Isabel came up to Sophia asking why she was wearing pajamas to school. Pajamas? She wasn't! Sophia was wearing a hideous pink t-shirt dress with a tutu and cupcake on it that we HAD to come home with after a recent Costco trip. The $10 it cost was well worth the wear it has had and the dress had actually started to grow on me. However, my friend who had also purchased this dress did not feel the same way and in an effort to not have the dress worn out in public had told her daughter it was a "pajama dress." Thankfully our kids being so young this was not a big ordeal to my daughter. My friend felt bad, I felt like she was a genius. How had I not thought about this?
Another friend, (for privacy we will call her E) over heard a conversation between her 5 year old son and 3 year old daughter that made her second guess what she told/threatened her kids....
Daughter: "My baby doll is dead."
Son: "Why did it jump off the couch and hit its head on the fireplace?"
Daughter: "No it climbed on the counter to get a snack and then lost its balance, fell off and hit her head, and then she fell on the scissors."
I laughed hysterically when she told me this story and the look of pure exhaustion had spread on her face. She explained that she told them these things to make sure they wouldn't ever do them! Not knowing it would ever have this kind of impact on them.
I noticed my own fault a couple weeks ago when my mom was in the back seat with my daughter. I heard her explaining, "Grandma, if we throw a fit and move our arms out of the car seat (which she has been known to do on SEVERAL occasions) then we have to go to the police station." Oh was the only response from Grandma she got and I found myself having to explain to my own mother my parenting techniques. One afternoon in a screaming fit my daughter tried to get out of her car seat while I was driving. No where to pull over and trying to keep an eye on the road, I turned around at a stop sign and told her, "Get back in that car seat or I will drive you to the police station and they can put you back in."
Maybe you think this is mean, but this is not a blog where we judge. At all. I was desperate and it worked and now was at least traumatic enough that it hasn't happened again even though we have had multiple fits in the car.
As parents or maybe just mothers, I can't really speak for men, we think of the absolute worst thing that could happen to our children and we terrify them with it. I have even found myself saying, "If you run in the street, you will die." What!? Yes we shouldn't run in the street, and yes you could get hit by a car and die, but is this really how we should explain this concept to them? By threatening death? Ha. Don't run with sticks, you'll fall and stab yourself...or remember the "You'll Shoot your eye out mom?"
xoxo
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