So lately, it seems, my children have forgotten the meaning of the phrase "be quiet". Especially when other people are still sleeping. Like, it's next to impossible. It's almost as if sleeping past 7 on a weekend is a war crime. The warfare they launch on your sanity is ridiculous. Bickering, whining, all out fighting over things so trivial it makes you literally sit and scratch your head thinking "I don't get it".
I have tried yelling threats from the bedroom, repeating myself "Be QUIET!" (said through clenched teeth, of course), getting up, displaying my dominance, and then storming back bed. None of which work. They continue to be disrespectful little soldiers, hell bent on making sure that if they are up, everybody is up.
I feel like Lynette on Desperate Housewives. Frazzled, sleep deprived, and ready to steal my kid's ADD medication just to have the energy to complete the day. Thankfully, none of my children have medication of any sort. Maybe that is the problem.... Every kid is on something these days. Maybe doping them into complacency wouldn't be so bad after all. Maybe a little Trazodone in their bedtime snack would help Mommy get a little shut eye on the weekends. Or maybe I could slide some MREs under the door and lock them in. Yeah, that's a bad idea. They'd probably tear the house down from the top floor down. Little Tazmanian Devils. Swirling beings of destruction.
So here is the million dollar question. HOW does one make their children realize that weekend mornings are for watching cartoons? How do you drill into their heads that one of these days, Mommy is going to be just angry enough to bring down fire and brimstone in a display of such splendor that Satan himself will cower in a corner of the depths of hell? I have tried speeches. I have tried bribing. Threats, rewards, grounding, asking them WHY they can't grasp the simple "be quiet when others are sleeping" approach. And nothing. Do I need to enact a household ban on leaving one's bedroom before I get up? I guess I need to figure something out. Things are about to reach a whole new level of interesting, with a new baby coming and all.
Hmmmm, maybe that's the key...postpartum hormones. I don't think M. Knight Shyamalan can top the scariness and reckless abandon of a new mom not getting enough sleep. I guess time will tell. Hopefully we won't be seeing each other on an NBC nightly special anytime soon.
I guess we conditioned our kids early about the miracle that is television [Another example of bad parenting, but apparently non-lethal].
ReplyDeleteOn the meds situation, while I'm sure it's overdone, I have one ADD who is supremely better with meds. If she doesn't take them, she has to be constantly supervised to unload the dishwasher, much less do homework. And the other has anxiety that the med fixes nicely. Until she forgets to figure out a plan to get her numerous projects sequenced and started. She got both the anxiety and the procrastination from me. So while grasp for meds for minor symptoms, it took nightly homework wrestling matches and anxiety attacks for us to accept that sometimes it's needed.