Everybody congratulate me, I have been declared a Bad Mama by my 5-year old, Monkey! Last night he said to me, “You are a Bad Mama and I’m never gonna love you again. And I’m never gonna like you again. Not ever again.” What atrocious behavior on my part caused these declarations, you may ask? When he tore the metal brad off a manila envelope I took it away from him. And I squeezed past him instead of letting him be a roadblock. His sister was crying about, well, practically nothing, but I had to find out and he didn’t want me to comfort her. Makes me think he may have had something to do with the aforementioned crying. But Pumpkin calmed down quickly and Monkey wasn’t talking.
He has a serious hogging-all-of-Mama’s-attention problem and hates it when I am not slavishly devoting 110% to his every whim. So when I paid attention to Pumpkin and then viciously refused to let him play with a tiny, sharp piece of metal, I was declared a Bad Mama. And then to top off my bizarre behavior, I thanked him for using his words instead of violence to express his anger. Then he threw a toy at me (good aim-hit me in the face), luckily it was a light-weight one and then he called me “stupid”.
That was it, the last straw, his downfall. Mama is lots of things, but stupid is not one of them. I took him to his room and informed him that calling people, but most especially Mama, stupid was unacceptable and he could just stay in his room until he was able to act like a civilized human being.
Guess what? When I went back into to his room later to see if he wanted to come out, he loved me again and I wasn’t a Bad Mama anymore. Aw, and just when I was getting used to it.
Kids are so funny like that. I wish I would’ve realized the weight of my words when I was growing up. I still feel bad to this day for things I didn’t even realize I was saying.
Don’t worry about that, Kari, I didn’t take his little words to heart and I bet your mom didn’t either. If he ever says that to me one day when he’s a grown-up, then I’ll be worried.
Congratulations! Having your children tell you that they hate you means you are doing something right.
When my kids say that I’m not being fair, or I’m being mean, or they hate me or they’ll never love me ever again, I pat myself on the back for a Job Well Done.
When they threaten to run-away, I do much, much more of that–whatever that was.
Seriously, just for a second,; it may hurt for a nano-second, but they don’t really mean it. They just don’t have the verbal skills to articulate what they really think/feel about the perceived unfairness of whatever it was you did. You get to play with manila envelopes, why can’t he? HE wants your attention, why are you giving it to Pumpkin? (The whole want/need thing is very fuzzy.) Even The Girl, at 16, is still a child and is unable to really verbalize what she wants/needs from us/feels. So, really, what they are saying is “I’m angry with you and I can’t tell you why so I’m going to lash out and hurt you back.” They’re just frustrated by what you’ve done and by what they feel and the inability to communicate that. IME, anyway.
I just dont know how all of you parents (especially mine as I was the classic brat-only boy and youngest which I decided early on granted me special privileges) do it
Better living through chemistry, Pido.
Drugs and booze and seconds of both. (c;