Hi Mamas,

I’m hoping some of you can help me think of how this ugly incident could have gone better, from a GD perspective.

The scene: I’m exhausted, recovering from pneumonia, having just returned part time to work, and nursing a 6 month old baby who is sleeping HORRIBLY. I’m beyond worn out and fighting hard to just get through my days.

My 6 y.o DD needs to practice her spelling test words. Like many 6 yos, she has an enormous yet fragile ego. One moment she is the best in the world at something, the next moment she is sobbing about how dumb and bad she is, based on the gentlest request (i.e., “I’m not comfortable with the way you are holding the baby – please put 2 hands on her” . . or, “Your mouth is very close to the baby’s ear and when you use that loud voice it could hurt her ear. I think she’s fussing because your voice is too loud.”) She is an extremely bright kid to whom much comes easily, particularly the academic. She’s kind of lazy about her schoolwork because it’s all pretty easy for her. We usually practice her spelling test words once, the night before they are due, and have fun with it, making up silly sentences for each word.

Tonight she got 4 words wrong – very unusual for her. She looked at me with a bright, open, smiling face and said “how did I do?” I was dreading telling her about the 4 words because I could see where this was headed. She was confident and feeling great, I was going to burst that bubble, and then she’d go off into one of her freak outs. Sure enough . . . . I said, “I see a few words that are not quite right – would you like to check them yourself and see if you can discover which ones?” She was becoming angry and irritated quickly, and blaming me for her misspellings (”It’s your fault - the sentences you made were so silly I could not concentrate”). We identified the words she had misspelled, and then I put a check by them on our list so I could remember the ones she might need to practice a few extra times. She immediately became enraged and scribbled out the words on the master list with an indelible marker (so I could no longer see them), and was insisting “it’s YOUR FAULT” and getting increasingly angry. I tried connecting with the need and the feeling - - “are you sad because you were hoping you would get all the words right? Are you worried about how you will do on the test?” She told me she was sad, and that she was dumb and stupid, and that she was leaving because she was too stupid to live. She also told me how mean and unfair I was. Her voice got louder and louder and ultimately she woke the baby (did I mention I have a baby who sleeps like CRAP?). I said to her, as I went upstairs to deal with the baby, “Because I am now dealing with the baby, I will probably not be able to put you to bed. Daddy will read you stories and lie with you. This is what happens when you are loud and yell. Not only does it make me sad, it wakes up your sister.” (I am the parent with most favored nation status. My DD loves and relies on me putting her to bed, singing our songs together, etc.)

The idea that she would have Daddy and not me freaked her out so badly (her preference of me is an entirely separate issue, one we struggle with, and a source of great sadness for my DH) that she started SCREAMING “I don’t like you! You are mean! I wish I didn’t live with you!” I am so tired, and weary, and sick, and dragging, and trying to do my best while shouldering the burden of all the child care, that I just threw in the towel. I withdrew in exhaustion and told her if she didn’t want to live with me, then she didn’t want me to put her to bed, and that I was not going to do our usual nighttime routine that evening. I’m quite certain this was not the best way to handle it - but it's what I did. I was frankly pissed off and feeling sorry for myself and annoyed at her drama.

I keep examining this whole miserable episode. How could I have handled this differently? Going forward, since I’m sure there will be thousands of additional opportunities for me to give DD feedback about schoolwork, what kind of a gentle, productive discussion can I have with her about how inappropriate her reaction was? I’m really tired of her exaggerated reactions to the smallest correction or indication that she is doing something less than perfectly. I need some ideas about how to speak with her about her reactions. I’m feeling so sad and frustrated and would be very grateful for your advice. If you have read this entire post, thank you, and TIA for any ideas.

Penny Roo, that sounds like a rough night! I'm sorry it went that way and I hope you're feeling better.

I'm wondering if something is happening at school that is bothering her- perhaps her teacher has really high expectations or she got embarassed about making a mistake? Maybe that would account somewhat for the exaggerated response.

Is she feeling anxious and needing more of your attention since the birth of your second child? Maybe she needs some special time with you and some sort of special role as big sister to help her feel more important?

About the schoolwork, what about talking to her and asking her how she'd like for you to help her with words she's missed? I was also thinking maybe you could make index cards with each word and she could use those to check her own work before she shows you- yk, compare what she wrote with what's on the card. And maybe start earlier in the week or only do a few at a time.

Also, you could point out when you make mistakes and how you handle it- not by being super upset, but by realizing it and working to correct it. Then she could see that it's ok not to be perfect. Maybe that would help.

Hope any of that helps and I hope you are well soon!
Ingrid

I don't have any advice at all, but I do have a hug. We had the same type of day here. I'm sure there are better solutions and some others will have good suggestions, but I just want to reassure you that sometimes days like this happen to everyone. (well at least they happen to me too, so if its not everyone at least its one other person, and we probably aren't the only ones)

what a difficult situation.

i think you handled it great. i mean, except for the fact that your dd was upset, but maybe she just needed to be upset? and maybe that is okay? honestly, i would probably have thrown in the towel earlier than you did :o

i think the suggestion about asking her how to test for spelling words is a great idea, i'm amazed at how many ideas my ds comes up with if given the opportunity to suggest a solution.

I think the above advice is great, we had a similar situation yesterday morning with our dd who is 6.5, however, I do explain to dd that to make mistakes is another way of learning and that it's ok, I wonder if that would help, we can't all be perfect and that making mistakes is part and parcel of life, otherwise she's putting the bar abit too high for herself. As for putting to bed, maybe you could turn around with putting dd to bed so that it's not all up to you, maybe dh could introduce something fun at bedtime that only he does to patch up the relationship, I don't know, read a book with a puppet or something like that. Ultimately i think you handled the situation with compassion and understanding, it's ok for us to get pissed off on occassion, it's a normal part of life and it happens your dd gets like that too, she needs to see that all her behaviour has reactions and not always good ones, I actually think that this was a really good learning curve for her and she has probably learned from it.
Good luck and hope that you are feeling better soon.

Thanks to all who responded. I am almost in tears at your compassionate and encouraging words.

:hug
How to handle it differently? Step 1, don't be sick. Ever. Illness and sleepiness are just bad ideas for parents. And all good parents are never sick or tired. And flowers should sprout where your feet walk.

That said, deep breaths and apologizing for mistakes goes a long way. Even now.

I think its really important for our children to realize that we are human, we get angry and frustrated and have our feelings hurt. You didn't sceam, yell or hit, right? Would the response that you showed to her have been OK from her to you? In other words, did you model something that would have been OK for her to do in your home? If so, I would forgive yourself and move on. If not, then I would apologize to her for whatever you think was "wrong" with your response and move on. For the record, IMHO you did nothing wrong.

Personally, I think its OK for kids to be unhappy now and again. Life isn't always going to be perfect, calm and rose-smelling. They are going to make mistakes. If they never get to practice that at home, how will they handle it at school? I would definitely ask her for her suggestions on making the homework tasks better and more productive, barring the obvious "don't do them" answer. She may have some insights that help. But schoolwork still has to be done (at least at our house -- if you are open to not doing it then that's a different deal) and all the drama in the world won't change that for us. And if drama has natural consequences, I think those are OK and good learning points for different skills than spelling. "Freaking out" at school isn't going to win her friends or teacher compassion, so learning to control them is probably more valuable than those spelling words.

My response to "I hate you" or whatever (from an older child -- it was different when they were 2) is something like "I'm sorry you feel that way. I love you. When you calm down we can talk about this." And I go about my tasks while they figure out how to calm down.

And I completely understand "most favored nation" status. Its a factor in our house too and I hate it and DH is deeply sorrowed by in on a regular basis.

just trying to get advice from your situation for my own. My 6.5 DD sounds VERY similar and we have days like this too. I think you handled it VERY well, much better then I have in the past....((((hugs))))

:hug
How to handle it differently? Step 1, don't be sick. Ever. Illness and sleepiness are just bad ideas for parents. And all good parents are never sick or tired. And flowers should sprout where your feet walk.

:rotflmao:laugh: Thanks! I needed a good laugh today!

That said, deep breaths and apologizing for mistakes goes a long way. Even now.

Yep, that too.

I really like how ds' teacher does spelling.

Monday they do a pretest IN CLASS.
Tuesday night their homework is to write each word in a sentence.
Wednesday night their homework is to write each word 5 times.
Thursday night their homework is to put the words in alphabetical order AND to have their parents quiz them on them.

This builds in the practice and the repetition without focusing on the words that they get wrong. And by the time I'm the one quizzing ds, he KNOWS them and rarely gets one wrong. (For a sensitive perfectionist, this is a lovely system.)

I'd also suggest NOT doing anything 'performance based' just before bed. If she's tired and stressed, that's a bad combo for a 6 year old. Move spelling to when the baby is awake, maybe after school.

Is your dd more emotional than usual right now? If she is then I suggest addressing the emotions differently with a hug and cuddle time in a special chair rather than trying to find a solution right away. It is very draining to do this even when you only have one child, but I have found that when dd is extra emotional this actually helps her to get back to her normal emotional state faster than trying to find solutions or discuss the problem does.
I also think that overall if she becomes frustrated and angry with a school thing and seems you should tell her she tried her best and that is what matters and offer to let it go there or do it another time. The first grade class I observed in last year had spelling tests and most of the kids got most of the words wrong on each test. If she is struggling when she usually does great then it may be more kids are and the teacher needs to have those results so she can go back and reteach the kids the phonics rules for those words. I have dd do school work in short intervals.

Some things you may need to just let her do how she does on them though. A few missed words or problems on a test aren't going to do long term damage to her overall academic acheivement no matter what grade she is in. With a new baby now after so many years of being the only child she may be feeling a lot like she wasn't good enough for you and that may be where this acting out is coming from even if though you have been exhausting yourself to try to help her to feel like this isn't the case, my aunt still feels this way about her parents having two more babies when she was this age and my mother still feels rejected and replaced by her half siblings who came along when she was a teenager. If letting her slide on a few misspelled words helps her to adjust better to having a new sibling then it may be worth letting some of the academic things go now. At this age you can pretty easily do a lot to help her catch up in the summer. If she will typically perform on an average basis on her own then be happy with average and reassure her that trying to do your best is what matters not being perfect.

:rotflmao:laugh: Thanks! I needed a good laugh today!:love


I really like how ds' teacher does spelling.

Monday they do a pretest IN CLASS.
Tuesday night their homework is to write each word in a sentence.
Wednesday night their homework is to write each word 5 times.
Thursday night their homework is to put the words in alphabetical order AND to have their parents quiz them on them.
This is how I remember spelling words in elementary school. And we'd do games in class related to the words throughout the week, like making up stories using them as a class out loud that the teacher would write on the board.