Tuesday, May 07, 2002
Oh the joys of being a parent…
Now that Vanessa is four years old, we thought it a good idea to start giving her some chores to do around the house. To start out with Erika thought about giving her something easy to do, so Vanessa was given the task of picking the dandelion heads in our small backyard.
This is where the battle of wills began.
At first, with prompting and encouragement from Erika and her mother, Vanessa did a good job. Then she was told to go and do the job by herself on subsequent days. This is when things started going south...
Yesterday I got a call from Erika, saying that Vanessa had refused to do the job she had agreed to do. So Erika naturally sent her to her room.
When I got home, I did my best to smooth things out with Vanessa, and I agreed to come out and supervise her dandelion picking, and help make it fun, if she promised to do it by herself the next day. So we did this -- in the rain -- and got the job done.
Stupidly, I didn't consider the awkward position I put Erika in, making her out to be the "bad cop", and completely undercutting her efforts through the day to get Vanessa to do it by herself. By did I get a dressing down -- and deservedly so. Mea culpa.
Unfortunately my idea about striking a "deal" with my 4-year doesn't seem to have worked. Erika called me up again during the day to say that Vanessa had again dug in her heels and wouldn't do her chore. So I had to tell Vanessa that I was very disappointed with her over the phone while I was at work, and while she was very teary and sad, she was still defiant.
Vanessa is being a very stubborn, willful little girl. This is admittedly a character trait I tend to admire in others under ordinary circumstances, but the circumstances don’t seem justified for this behaviour. Picking dandelion heads in a 12' x 10' ft backyard doesn't strike me as being something to protest about.
At the moment it is a battle of the wills between parents and little girl.
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