Karma

My oldest daughter will be four years old in a few months. She's been a monster lately. It is painful for me to see her perfectionistic, controlling and bossy personality because guess where she gets it? She just can't be happy unless she gets her way and it has to be perfect or else she goes crazy! I don't really know what is the most appropriate or effective way to relate with her when she gets this way. She doesn't understand reason and counting to 3 for a time-out hasn't been working lately. She just won't go to her room to take her time out. Then I take away a movie or a treat as a consequence and she just goes ballistic.

I think that the law of cause and effect is a difficult lesson to learn. And it is a difficult one to teach too. If she throws her favorite DVD on the floor in anger, naturally she will not be allowed to watch it! She has to face that consequence. To give in would be doing her a disservice.

So I just have to tough it out. I am the parent. She will not always like me because of it. I am part of her learning of tough lessons in life. I can't shirk my duties just because I want her to like me. Sometimes peace is not an appropriate option. Peace at the cost of learning and growing would be too great a cost and not a true peace. I just have to keep my anger and irritation in check. I have to deliver consequences without those emotions. That is the only way I can relay to her that it is not personal. It is just what it is.

She is the child, I am the parent. The child tests, the parent teaches.