Skip to main content

Power Struggles

What is it about power struggles and going to the bathroom? I know this is only a HINT of what I am going to face come The Rabbit's teen years, and I am terrified.

I can tell when she needs to go...she hops around like, a, well, rabbit, holding herself. But god forbid I would ask her if she needs to go, or worse, TELL her to go. She screams at me like I am asking her to take her beloved stuffed dog and throw him out the window. Or let me wash him.

So we do this: I see her jumping. I say, "Let's go to the bathroom PLEASE." She screams. I back down. 20 minutes later. Repeat. 10 minutes Repeat with escalating voice levels. 12 minutes later, a hurried run to the bathroom and pee streaming down her legs, on to her clothes, her socks, the rug, with her smiling like, "You can't get me."

Short of demanding she clean it up (She's 4...can I do this????? Don't send me hate mail....) I don't know what else to do except keep heading down to the laundry twice a week.

Help.

Comments

Kate B. said…
Yep. We're with you on this one. Except the Small(er) One has now graduated to shouting "I'm going to wee my pants" when I've cruelly refused her whatever happens to be her heart's desire at that very second.

I think it's an attention thing, closely related to a 'ha! I've figured out a way to push your mental mommy buttons'. The cure? Buggered if I know.
Manhattan Mama said…
So when they hit 16 is it going to be, "I'm NOT throwing out my pot!"?????

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the