Falling behind the curve

This evening was not a smooth one and it is my fault. I gave all of my “A game” time to business tasks this week and none of it to my kids. This afternoon I was pretty burned out. I made dinner, but it was 90 minutes later than it should have been. This is potentially disastrous because my kids really need the friend-free, electronics-free space between dinner and bed. If I’m doing it right, they can get homework done and still have an hour or more to play quietly.

This evening was spent warding off incipient quarrels and tantrums. Unfortunately in the space of time I had, I could only head these things off by yelling louder. I prefer a much gentler touch. But I’ve succeeded in getting 3 out of 4 kids into bed. Link is staying up a little longer to get his play time. Kiki could be up too, but she’s suffering from a head cold and went to bed voluntarily. The fact that Gleek is suffering from the same cold is the source of most of the Kiki/Gleek conflicts. Neither of them has much tolerance for anything that isn’t exactly the way the want it right this second. As a side note I am truly impressed with both of my girls. Kiki had to be yelled into silence when she was continually sniping at the way Gleek was doing things, but then she nodded and understood when I took a moment to explain why I’d yelled rather than trying to handle it a different way. She could see what she was doing wrong, she was just too sick to stop herself in a moment of irritation. Gleek has been running all day despite being sick and she was seriously over stimulated. But when I shepherded her into her bed, she hugged me tight. It was very apparent that she was glad that I had headed off multiple tantrums, she doesn’t want to be out of control and is grateful when I prevent her from flying into a fury.

I also had a good moment with Link. He was in full-on stubborn mode complete with angry scowl over the fact that he had to do homework. This was in part caused because in all the other chaos he managed to leave the table and start a game after dinner. I generally keep him at the table until homework is done precisely because of this reaction. He’ll sit there fuming that I’ve pulled him away from his game for far longer than it would take for him to get his homework done. Once he lets go of his anger it is gone, but he can hang on tight for hours. This kind of a stand off is particularly difficult because Link is very sensitive to negative emotions pointed at him. If some one speaks to him with frustration, he feels yelled at and scolded no matter what the tone of voice is actually like. So in an inspired moment I looked at Link and said “Can I be on your team?” He looked at me confused and interested. I then made clear that I didn’t want to be working against him with me trying to get his homework done and him trying not to have to do it. He agreed that I could be on his team. I then said we needed to pick a goal for our team. I suggested making sure he had play time before bed as a goal. The only obstacle to our goal was one math sheet. It didn’t work completely, he was still mad about the homework, but the stand off was over. He began expressing his anger by writing as hard as he could rather than by refusing to pick up the pencil.

Hmm. Looking back I think my kids got about an hour of A game from me. But it was all “crisis management” rather than “ahead of the curve.” I think I’m going to have to do more of what I did last fall. I’m going to have to block out sections of time where I’m not allowed to do business things. I think I’m getting enough of a feel for the daily schedule that I can do this now. As for tomorrow, the Schlock book needs to take a back seat for a day so that I can get back ahead of the curve on the house and kid stuff.