"We try BUT life isn't fair"
My husband seems to be really good getting our children to fall asleep during a story. I wonder if that's because he has a lack of enthusiasm? He's definitely a great father. He's outside right now bombing around the yard dragging our children on sleds while I fold endless laundry! I know the snow hills are packed full of people so pulling sleds on our property sounds more realistic for us! Our children are having a great time. It reminds me when we take our children tubing or wake boarding in the summer, except knee boarding on snow behind a quad. There is only one issue with our children that seems to surface on a regular basis. I know and understand this is normal for siblings. It's always not fair according to someone. For one of our sons to him, it's never fair. It doesn't matter if his turn was first or if he gets many turns, it's just not fair when he's not getting a turn! It's a no win situation. It's interesting because my husband and I can spend whole days with different exciting events for our children but still at the end of the day, someone isn't happy. Life isn't fair! An argument will break out about how many turns he had compared to someone else but the funny part of this, he wasn't even counting. Usually our one son that's hard to please always has the most turns, always has the most attention and it's still not good enough. My husband and I recognize that our energy is always directed to our one son. With stating this, this doesn't mean anyone is left out but if we drafted on paper the percentages on time with each child, our one son is at the top of the list! Of course he doesn't see it that way. So I'm starting to think about different strategies. Trying to be sensitive to his needs because he wants to be validated with any of his thoughts. Even if most are elaborated stories! For our son, I recognize that he spends most of his time attention seeking, usually with negative approaches. I also have noticed bullying, manipulation and deception behaviours. He avoids accountability's for his actions at all cost and usually passes blame onto others including my husband and I. While I write this, our son also exhibits compassion, thoughtfulness and giving. He shares, honestly I can say he loves and cares for everyone in his life. He is really awesome with younger children. Very helpful and has many excellent qualities. He has come a long way since we adopted him! He shows us affection and rarely do we hear, "You don't care about me!" anymore. Our first year with him we were not his family, we were a family. We were A family that didn't care and slaughtered animals in the backyard! I'm proud now to say we're HIS family that wants to move to China. So we've come a long way. See, I am a thinker. With all of our children, I think about what we can do differently to change what is. Now I'm thinking about how to improve negative attention seeking......I know if we proceed to involve ourselves with the negative behaviour, our son is getting exactly what he wants. So we need to attend and recognize the positives more and ignore the negatives. I keep reminding myself a saying I heard at a Seminar last year, "Don't jump on their train" I know that we're guilty sometimes for overlooking their efforts. Acknowledgement is important. I think it takes practice to learn to acknowledge when a child is being good, so noticing and commenting everyday about their good behaviour should change the bad. This must work with attention seeking, if we acknowledge the positive ways he's seeking perhaps the negative way will diminish. I'm really not convinced this would change the "It's not fair" attitude after a days fun but it's a step that everyone should constantly be aware with raising children. As a thinker, it affects me in negative and positive ways. I should always catch myself and turn any negative thinking into a positive outcome. I speak of positive energies a lot which I completely believe that if you awake with a positive attitude and focus, usually your day will be productive with positive outcomes. I know with raising teenagers that if I approach them negatively with their issues, it's a recipe for disaster. Instead of asking, "What did you do that for?" I have been sensitively approaching suggesting, "Maybe you should try this instead of" or I will say, "When I was your age, I did......" Power of suggestion instead of putting their ideas or what they did down will receive better results. "What do I know?" I'm not always right either. I'm learning as their Mother to try different strategies, different approaches to each and every one of them in hopes that I can curb some negative attention seeking. To develop a feeling of fairness regardless how many times one will have a turn or how long it was. I guess for me, like writing, it's about reminding myself everyday on how to deal with what's presented to me. On how I deal with it will hopefully change their response. We'll see, life is a learning curb for all of us and every path leads us to new directions, new attempts to make life fair.
My husband seems to be really good getting our children to fall asleep during a story. I wonder if that's because he has a lack of enthusiasm? He's definitely a great father. He's outside right now bombing around the yard dragging our children on sleds while I fold endless laundry! I know the snow hills are packed full of people so pulling sleds on our property sounds more realistic for us! Our children are having a great time. It reminds me when we take our children tubing or wake boarding in the summer, except knee boarding on snow behind a quad. There is only one issue with our children that seems to surface on a regular basis. I know and understand this is normal for siblings. It's always not fair according to someone. For one of our sons to him, it's never fair. It doesn't matter if his turn was first or if he gets many turns, it's just not fair when he's not getting a turn! It's a no win situation. It's interesting because my husband and I can spend whole days with different exciting events for our children but still at the end of the day, someone isn't happy. Life isn't fair! An argument will break out about how many turns he had compared to someone else but the funny part of this, he wasn't even counting. Usually our one son that's hard to please always has the most turns, always has the most attention and it's still not good enough. My husband and I recognize that our energy is always directed to our one son. With stating this, this doesn't mean anyone is left out but if we drafted on paper the percentages on time with each child, our one son is at the top of the list! Of course he doesn't see it that way. So I'm starting to think about different strategies. Trying to be sensitive to his needs because he wants to be validated with any of his thoughts. Even if most are elaborated stories! For our son, I recognize that he spends most of his time attention seeking, usually with negative approaches. I also have noticed bullying, manipulation and deception behaviours. He avoids accountability's for his actions at all cost and usually passes blame onto others including my husband and I. While I write this, our son also exhibits compassion, thoughtfulness and giving. He shares, honestly I can say he loves and cares for everyone in his life. He is really awesome with younger children. Very helpful and has many excellent qualities. He has come a long way since we adopted him! He shows us affection and rarely do we hear, "You don't care about me!" anymore. Our first year with him we were not his family, we were a family. We were A family that didn't care and slaughtered animals in the backyard! I'm proud now to say we're HIS family that wants to move to China. So we've come a long way. See, I am a thinker. With all of our children, I think about what we can do differently to change what is. Now I'm thinking about how to improve negative attention seeking......I know if we proceed to involve ourselves with the negative behaviour, our son is getting exactly what he wants. So we need to attend and recognize the positives more and ignore the negatives. I keep reminding myself a saying I heard at a Seminar last year, "Don't jump on their train" I know that we're guilty sometimes for overlooking their efforts. Acknowledgement is important. I think it takes practice to learn to acknowledge when a child is being good, so noticing and commenting everyday about their good behaviour should change the bad. This must work with attention seeking, if we acknowledge the positive ways he's seeking perhaps the negative way will diminish. I'm really not convinced this would change the "It's not fair" attitude after a days fun but it's a step that everyone should constantly be aware with raising children. As a thinker, it affects me in negative and positive ways. I should always catch myself and turn any negative thinking into a positive outcome. I speak of positive energies a lot which I completely believe that if you awake with a positive attitude and focus, usually your day will be productive with positive outcomes. I know with raising teenagers that if I approach them negatively with their issues, it's a recipe for disaster. Instead of asking, "What did you do that for?" I have been sensitively approaching suggesting, "Maybe you should try this instead of" or I will say, "When I was your age, I did......" Power of suggestion instead of putting their ideas or what they did down will receive better results. "What do I know?" I'm not always right either. I'm learning as their Mother to try different strategies, different approaches to each and every one of them in hopes that I can curb some negative attention seeking. To develop a feeling of fairness regardless how many times one will have a turn or how long it was. I guess for me, like writing, it's about reminding myself everyday on how to deal with what's presented to me. On how I deal with it will hopefully change their response. We'll see, life is a learning curb for all of us and every path leads us to new directions, new attempts to make life fair. 
Thank you so much for the reminder to ignore the negative attention seeking and focus wholeheartedly on the positive actions and seeking!
ReplyDeleteI'm guilty of jumping on the train too. Although I do strive to jump off...several times a day! ;)