I have been doing this parenting gig long enough to know that kids go through rough patches. You know, periods of weeks or even months when they seem determined to drive their parents up the fucking wall. They can’t help it, this is just part of growing up.
The past few weeks, we seem to have entered my most dreaded part of having more than one kid: when both girls seem to be channeling a demon at the same time.
M is a kid who has always been easy to feed. Food was never an issue for her. We sit some food in front of her and she eats an appropriate amount of the choices provided. Viola! For four and half years that system worked perfectly.
Until this month.
All the sudden, M has decided she doesn’t want to eat what we give her. She is trying to make food a battleground. I do my best not to engage in those shenanagins. If she doesn’t want to eat, I am ok with that being her choice.
Or I was until she hit what appears to be a growth spurt. Currently, low blood sugar turns her into Linda Blair’s even eviler twin. This happens about three times every day. I have tried several different strategies, each seemed to work for a few days. But then M seems to catch on and find a loophole so she can make eating, snacks and meals as painful as possible.* Fun times!
Intuitive girl that she is, L does not want to be left out of the fun. She has decided that this month is going to be No Sleep Month. YAY! Every parent’s favorite.
For the past 9 months, we have been rocking L to sleep every night with a bottle. Some nights the rocking could take over an hour before she drifted off. A few weeks ago, we accidentally discovered that if we rock for a few minutes then lay L in bed, she just goes to sleep. WTF??? We have literally spent WEEKS of our lives rocking her to sleep. This was like the jackpot. We felt we finally had made it over the sleep hump.
Now that she falls right to sleep, she is mixing things up by randomly waking up at about 11:00 pm. She yells, plays, talks, sings, cries all while demanding my unceasing attention until about 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning. And she wakes up at somewhere between 5:15 and 6:15. This is unneccessarily early to say the very least.
The only thing that makes a dent in the sleep disaster is Motrin before bedtime and a second dose around 1:00am. I keep thinking it MUST BE TEETHING. L has proven to have the SLOWEST teeth I have ever heard of. When her second tooth broke through the skin, it moved so slowly the gums kept healing over it and re-cutting for about two weeks before it got high enough for the gums to let it be. All the while, she screamed and slept poorly.
The screwy sleep at night causes a wacky nap schedule, with L slumping into her cheerios if I don’t give her the opportunity to actually lay down. She spends a lot of her day cranky because she is overly tired.
Together, L and M are quite the pair the past few weeks.
“This will pass. This will pass. This will pass.” I keep chanting in my head.
It has to or else I might run away and join the circus.
P.S. This post is not a request for solutions to these problems. With L, we just have to wait it out, hope she cuts the damn tooth already and let her get her body organized again. As for M, she is clearly feeling her oats and seeing just how far she can use this food thing to control and manipulate her parents. She is figuring out that it isn’t getting her the attention or response she wants, but she keeps upping the ante to make sure.
“not a request for solutions” Darn! what are we supposed to do with our A-1, prime-grade quality assvice???
“You know, periods of weeks or even months when they seem determined to drive their parents up the fucking wall.”
Sorry.
heh. Probably mean of me to mention this, but I had to giggle at that. Weeks or months of annoying behaviors sounds good to me. I’ve got teens. Their endurance is fabulous. They manage to be obnoxious for YEARS.
Heh. I actually looked across the table at Mr. A tonight at dinner and said “I am not looking forward to the teen years at all.”
Also, did you see this article? People with teens are the unhappiest of all. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/opinion/12mon4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I only have one and, well, he does it the other way around, it seems — periods of a lull and the rest of the time being a “challenge.”
I’m being extreme here, actually. I’m being extreme because lately he’s being a “challenge.”
Oh yeah. The joys.
The only way to get through those periods of kids driving you up a wall is to yell, shout, kick the wall, and wait until it passes. We had a demon-from-hell period just a few weeks ago. After the hubby blew his top, suddenly all has been Sweetness and Light (mostly). I think I will schedule OD to blow his top once a month…Anyway, no assvice, just lots of “oh, yeah”s.
Oh, I was one of those awful food kids. It lasted years. For a while, I only ate white food. Boiled chicken, rice, cauliflower. Then there was the “bread only” phase, and then the “meat only” phase. Then I tried to just do milk and peanut butter. Some of these are funny stories my mother tells, and I was old enough to remember some of them myself. Finally my mother threw up her hands and fed me whatever I wanted (I believe it may have been months of fast food) until I finally started requesting vegetables.
I’m mighty afraid of what I will reap when the Bug hits that stage.
Hang in there, AmFam, and hope you manage a little sleep tonight.
No advice here, just Oh, yeah, you’re telling me.
It will pass, it will pass, it will pass…
Keep up your chanting (it will pass). That’s what I’ve been doing over here!
We just hit one of those “rough patches” this week too. We don’t use the term “terrible twos” b/c we don’t like the sound of it but we every time my son just seems to burst out crying and screaming for no apparent reason we just look knowingly at each other. Crap – where did our sweet and easy baby go. “This too shall pass.”
I find telling my kid she is driving me crazy makes me feel better. It doesn’t necessarily stop the behavior, but it does make me laugh when she parrots back “Mama! I drive you CRAZY?!!”
oh man, i so understand. there must be something in the local water.
Jamie teethed like that. It’s probably the main reason why, if we don’t have another, I’ll be ok with it. Living hell.
Feeling your pain ….oh yeah…
My daughter has always been a picky eater, and I can’t even complain because she inherited it from me. (I’ve recovered though, and eat a variety of foods.) This morning I took her to the doctor, who asked her what she had for breakfast, and I had to admit to feeding her pumpkin pie. It was embarrassing. But the reason I let her do it is that it’s squash! And she doesn’t eat the crust. Oh well…
Is it a full moon right now or something? My kids have been super grumpy grump grump lately. They have been driving me nuts!
Fwiw, I’m always impressed by your parenting skills and your devotion to your kids.
When I think back on when my kids were young and determined to drive me up a wall, I’m grateful they’re all teens and beyond. They’re delightful now, but not for love nor money would I relive the year when my oldest two daughters were four and two.