Disciplining makes my heart hurt

Tantrums are not new to us. Addy started expressing her frustrations via flailing limbs and tears months ago. Just recently though, things have changed. While I previously thought the outbursts she displayed were Addy Pissed Level 10, I have now learned those were just Category 3 fits of rage.

When this girl doesn’t get her way, destruction commeth, eardrums ring and tears spew. And sometimes I have a really hard time holding my ground. Sometimes I wonder if I’m overreacting, being too strict or expecting too much from a human who is still pretty new to the world.

I’ve been struggling with a meltdown that occurred on Friday when I was working from home. It was time for Addy’s nap. Lately, she wants to sleep with every stuffed animal in her room during nap time. As soon as we leave her room, we hear her scamper out of bed, gather them up, build a little nest with them and then doze off.

So when Addy said she wanted all of her animals, I was down with it, and put all of them (we’re talking about 10 total) in bed with her. Thirty minutes later, the baby monitor informed me that she was still awake and playing with all of them. That’s when I decide it was a bad choice to let her sleep with all of her animals, and it was time to take some of them away so she would go to sleep. This did not go over well with Adeline.

I explained why I was taking some of the animals away. She lost her mind. Screaming, balling, hurling her little body around in her crib. I told her she could have one animal back from those I had just taken. The freak out escalated. At that point, I left the room and closed the door behind me, my heart breaking as I shut my tormented daughter into her room and thought there’s no reasoning with her, let her get this out of her system, then go back in. I sat in my room listening to her, hating that I had removed myself from her when she was so upset, hearing her struggling to say the words “I want my animals” through tremendous sobs. “Why did I take them away?” I asked myself. Was that really necessary? She would have eventually fallen asleep. Did I just confuse her by first giving her the animals then marching in and taking them away because she was playing rather than sleeping? Of course I had. Bad Mommy! I sat in my room and listened to my daughter sob herself to sleep, because I knew I couldn’t go back in and return the animals at that point, and that going in to attempt soothing her would just reignite the Animal Battle. And I felt awful.

Sometimes it’s hard to know if I’m being reasonable when I choose to take action on a behavior I deem incorrect. In general, when it comes to life and how I live it, I could benefit from washing down a chill pill with several cold beers. The last thing I want to do is come down too hard and too often on Addy, especially unnecessarily so. At the same time, it’s my job to teach her right from wrong, what behavior is appropriate and what is not. Repeatedly ignoring us when we tell her no? That’s easy – wrong. Wanting to play with her animals for a while before going to bed? Not a such a big deal. The bigger lesson is that I probably should not have given her 10 stuffed animals to sleep with, and just let her continue her old habit of climbing out of bed to get them herself after we leave her room. Duh.

There is one thing that never changes as I dig further into the tenches of parenthood – the lessons never ever stop coming. And while I feel horribly guilty when hindsight proves me wrong, I reassure myself by knowing it leads to me becoming a better parent.

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