Only good girls get ice cream

Rosemary is on a bit of a boundary-testing run at the moment. Of course, she never completely stops testing our boundaries, probably because she knows full well that we can both be inconsistent. At the moment, though, it is very difficult to keep in my head the knowledge that this is all part of growing up and a necessary phase to go though. Because, mostly I just want to scream and shout and send her to boarding school.

Example 1: Yesterday, her cousin came to visit for about an hour, while my aunt went to a physiotherapy appointment. Usually, they play very nicely together and she’s enjoying that he’s able to run around now and is gradually developing some language so she can understand him a little. Usually, she loves sharing her toys with him and with her young visitors. Yesterday, everything he tried to play with she tried to grab back off him, shouting ‘No! That’s mine! You can’t have it!’ At one point, she was even trying to hit/push him away so that he couldn’t take her toy saxophone back, when she’d managed to grab it off him. She spent a lot of the time he was visiting in her room having time outs followed by an explanation of why what she was doing was not nice. Didn’t make any difference. They did sit happily together while eating lunch, and were fine for the ten minutes he was still there afterwards.

Another example: My aunt brought round a lovely table and chair for Rosemary, yesterday. Rosemary loved it and thanked her profusely. She played with it, sat at the table, watched Charlie and Lola at the table (on my netbook), jumped off it and generally really enjoyed it. But she also decided that it was far too nice, and needed to make her mark on it – with crayons and pink highlighter. The first time she did it, the crayon was taken away from her and the table wiped (it did come off, thankfully) and she cried for a while but was then fine. The second time, the highlighter was taken away from her and she cried for even longer.

Last night, she ate most of her dinner and so was expecting ice cream. It’s not a rule that she gets ice cream if she eats all her dinner; it’s a rule that she definitely doesn’t get ice cream if she hardly touches her dinner. She wasn’t allowed ice cream, because she hadn’t been very good during the day. ‘But I want it! I need it! I want it… NOW!’ She got yoghurt as a compromise and a reminder to think about the lack of ice cream today, and try to be as good as possible.

So, this morning, she told me ‘When Rupert comes to visit, I will let him play with my saxophone and then I can have ice cream. Right?’ She got some kind of message from the lack of ice cream, but I don’t think she’s quite got the concept of being good all day. She still refused to get dressed, something she hadn’t done for a while, but has started up with this week. She still drew on her new table (highlighter incident above). She still screamed when I brought her bread and butter and peanut butter, because ‘I didn’t say that! I don’t like that!’ (and gobbled it down five minutes later, saying ‘I love it now’).

I know I need to be patient and not scream and shout. I know we need to make sure we work consistent punishments and rewards, so she can know and understand what to expect. I know that this is part of the next stage of learning rules and understanding how to follow them. But couldn’t she have done this at some other time, when I’m not feeling almost constant nausea, exhaustion and a fair bit of pain in leg from the pelvic girdle pain. Like six months ago, or in two years? Two and a half years would be good, because then we could combine it with Baby Number 2’s jumping into the terrible twos.

If anyone has any tips or tricks on dealing with this stage, and somehow keeping from screaming (remembering that I cannot turn to alcohol at the moment), I will be all ears.