Love and logic.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told I’m the worst mom in the world, Tim could quit his job and stay-at-home with the kids too. Today I got an earful because I was refusing to “rescue” my youngest daughter from her dilly-dallying morning ways by making her lunch.
She’d been up for half an hour and had barely gotten dressed. She had five minutes left to do everything else – eat breakfast and make her lunch. She uncharactetistically scarfed down a bowl of cereal but, when faced with the task of pulling together a lunch in a minute flat, she began to fall apart and yelled at me to help her with her lunch. In response to her disrespect, and the fact that her distress could have been easily avoided by staying on task that morning, I flatly refused.
The girl launched into a full-blown tantrum and subsequently missed her ride to school. Well, the policy in our house is that if you miss your ride, you get to walk the almost 1.5 miles to school. By yourself.
She tried to turn the tables on me and say that she wouldn’t go to school unless I drove her. I wasn’t playing that game. The policy on THAT is that if she didn’t do her job (school), she would get to do my job for the day (a whole lotta chores, naturally). We have a policy for everything, apparently.
Reluctantly, she began to come around. She cleaned up the destruction her tantrum had resulted in, made her lunch and got herself out the door. I followed her closely in the car for over a mile until we reached a certain point where the road ends and the walking path begins. I decided to join her for the final stretch.
Apparently, the fresh air and exercise had done her good. We chatted about how she could avoid the same scenario in the future as we dodged sprinklers and giggled when we got sprayed. All was forgiven. Apparently I’m no longer the worst mom in the world. At least until next time.