I just posted about my very negative DD (7.75). She is wonderful, self aware, intelligent, but is also very negative, grumpy, and when upset, tends to attempt to be controlling. Her glass is mostly half empty, she gets envious of those who have an easier time remaining positive and so on. At the same time, we've been working on her coping, and she is doing better. Yet my patience has limits. I realize that I have my hot buttons, and I want to change my instinctive reaction to them, as my reactions are not helping anyone.
Sometimes when she is not happy with my solution to a problem, she would dramatize significantly, to make her point, in a rather passive aggressive way.
Example. I bought a stroller for the baby on which my 5 year old can ride as well, so that we can all go for longer walks. Despite the obvious benefit to having this stroller--more trips to the library which she loves, the playground and so on, she is envious, quite irrationally, that her brother gets to ride in it, and she can't. This manifested in her "hating the stroller, hating the shopping trip we made to buy it" and so on. Then we were finally seemingly over this. The stroller is parked in our hallway. Yes, the space is tight. But not terribly, and DH and I can walk around it, no problem.
Yesterday she started complaining about the stroller again--how she hated it and so on. I tried to bring up the positives of the stroller, and she seemingly got over it again. Then she walked by it and bumped her foot into it, told me she got hurt because of it. At that time I wasn't sure what caused the accident, I just heard her bump into it. I walked over, and told her to walk by it carefully, and showed her how to do it. Then she tripped and fell--hard. Obviously on purpose, there was no mistake about it. And told me, See, this terrible stroller is in my way (And so on).
This is where I lost it and yelled, and grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her into her bedroom, telling her to stay there. Okay, I don't think time outs are beneficial, especially not for her--she just gets angrier when separated. I'm very unhappy with what I did. I apologized, and we talked. I told her I get angry as well, but I have to forgive myself (she is very hard on herself) and try to do better next time. That's the only way to move forward.
I need to have an alternate response for when I'm so upset with her. Her behaviour, like in the example above, makes me feel helpless and frustrated and angry. The whole incident happend after I already was running thin--the stroller issue resurfaced again (her hatred towards it and so on) and I already "did well" by remaining patient and calming and trying to help her cope with her feeling and yet redirecting her towards positive thoughts that we were actually on the way to the library.
I think I react so poorly because I feel I failed her somehow, that I can't help her, and she is creating this drama, hurting herself, to gain attention. This is scary to me, to witness her this way. I need a response that I can use, in the heat of the moment, that would be more productive, and wouldn't involve me yelling and pushing, and would model appropriate anger management.
Please talk to me about your strategies.
Sometimes when she is not happy with my solution to a problem, she would dramatize significantly, to make her point, in a rather passive aggressive way.
Example. I bought a stroller for the baby on which my 5 year old can ride as well, so that we can all go for longer walks. Despite the obvious benefit to having this stroller--more trips to the library which she loves, the playground and so on, she is envious, quite irrationally, that her brother gets to ride in it, and she can't. This manifested in her "hating the stroller, hating the shopping trip we made to buy it" and so on. Then we were finally seemingly over this. The stroller is parked in our hallway. Yes, the space is tight. But not terribly, and DH and I can walk around it, no problem.
Yesterday she started complaining about the stroller again--how she hated it and so on. I tried to bring up the positives of the stroller, and she seemingly got over it again. Then she walked by it and bumped her foot into it, told me she got hurt because of it. At that time I wasn't sure what caused the accident, I just heard her bump into it. I walked over, and told her to walk by it carefully, and showed her how to do it. Then she tripped and fell--hard. Obviously on purpose, there was no mistake about it. And told me, See, this terrible stroller is in my way (And so on).
This is where I lost it and yelled, and grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her into her bedroom, telling her to stay there. Okay, I don't think time outs are beneficial, especially not for her--she just gets angrier when separated. I'm very unhappy with what I did. I apologized, and we talked. I told her I get angry as well, but I have to forgive myself (she is very hard on herself) and try to do better next time. That's the only way to move forward.
I need to have an alternate response for when I'm so upset with her. Her behaviour, like in the example above, makes me feel helpless and frustrated and angry. The whole incident happend after I already was running thin--the stroller issue resurfaced again (her hatred towards it and so on) and I already "did well" by remaining patient and calming and trying to help her cope with her feeling and yet redirecting her towards positive thoughts that we were actually on the way to the library.
I think I react so poorly because I feel I failed her somehow, that I can't help her, and she is creating this drama, hurting herself, to gain attention. This is scary to me, to witness her this way. I need a response that I can use, in the heat of the moment, that would be more productive, and wouldn't involve me yelling and pushing, and would model appropriate anger management.
Please talk to me about your strategies.
