TV Meltdown
There are days where TV is truly a crutch. We don’t lean on it often, but with juggling 3 young kids and a doggie that is constantly in and out of the vet (this time it’s cracked teeth and an abscess), it’s been quite exhausting. We probably leaned too heavily on it earlier this week.
The kids are fine with TV and ever since they got cut off from watching Disney+ and switching over to more calm, eductions programming (think Daniel Tiger), their behavior has gotten a lot better. They don’t argue or hit as much, at least in my opinion. There are occasional fights, but nothing out of the ordinary like before. My wife decided to let them watch Clifford and they have been loving it.
One of the nights earlier this week when they were watching Clifford, they got to watch in the late afternoon and a bit after they showered. We know that if they watch TV up until bedtime, things can go nuclear. Turning off the TV was fine, but when it was time to blow out some candles, that’s when things went haywire.
My 6 year old daughter E blew out the first candle. No biggie, my 4 year old son C wanted to blow out some and there were some still lit luckily. C asked and he saw two candles (the remaining two) and blew them both out after we said it was fine to do so. E lost it because things were unfair. She wanted to blow out another one.
There is a period where the easy thing to do is to light another one and let E blow it out, but I have constant nightmares about my kids growing up crazy entitled and wanting everything their way. When there is a safe zone to show them life doesn’t always go their way, I want to use it. Safe zone meaning nothing urgent is going on after and we have plenty of energy to diffuse the situation. We told E she needs to accept the result and next time she could blow out one more candle.
What happens next was crazy because E continued to throw a fit. She was moody all night, after story time, and even in the morning the next day. I haven’t seen her old onto something for that long. Especially because a good night’s rest usually does the trick and fixes things. She was mad and wouldn’t apologize for her behavior (screaming, swinging her stuffy to hit people, etc.). I tried to talk to her about the fact that she can still be angry about what happened, but she should apologize for her behavior because it was wrong. This did not go over well and ended up with a big argument.
We all needed to take some time to simmer down. Luckily there was school to drop her off so she could get out and breathe a bit. I took E to school and by the time we walked there, she was fine. She seemed to have a good day too and when she came home, she wasn’t feeling big feelings anymore. Definitely learned the lesson to not let them watch TV so close to bedtime and to also figure out another way to diffuse perceived unfairness (and suggesting another way to resolve it in the moment). It was truly an up and down 12 hours and I can’t wait to see how this all shapes up in her teenage years (that’s sarcasm). Fun times ahead!
