In response to Merry

bribery was us!

It’s Big’s birthday tomorrow. She has mentioned wanting a birthday cake. This morning I told her that we would go and buy one right after her swimming class, but that going relied on her behaving during the class. I emphasized the point that I do not mind if she can’t swim, I do mind if she doesn’t try, and I won’t accept screaming, wailing and performing. I should add at this stage that I am not dragging her to the pool kicking and screaming, she requested swimming lessons, and repeats that she wants to go any time she is asked.

Well, it was hard work, not least because Small has suddenly decided that he doesn’t like sitting on the side looking at a book for forty minutes, so carrying him around is tiring, especially when he’s whining in my ear throughout. And Big wanted lots of input and encouragement, but apart from one slight blip over swimming without a float and her face in the water, we didn’t have any tears, we had absolutely no screaming and she made a good effort at everything.

One of the other mothers said to her that she had done lots better this week, and she told her that it was because she wanted her birthday cake – probably makes me seem like a complete ogre, but hey, it worked. So we went and bought a ballerina birthday cake and it’s sitting on the side in the kitchen.

We’ve also played two games of this that we borrowed from Kirsty yesterday. Again hard work – basically if she’s going to do anything Big wants me right there, doing nothing else but sitting with her. Which I will do, but not when she then starts to drag it out and mess around and generally not try. Am I too hard on her? Possibly, but I find it incredibly difficult to just sit and be taken for granted, which is what it feels like. So halfway through the first game when she manifestly wasn’t listening to me, I gathered up the cards and put them back in their box. That prompted tears – when she’d recovered she got them out again, managed that game and the next one.

So I think the winning strategy is positive attention (but how hard I find it to come out with encouraging noises – never really heard them myself as a child, which I suppose is part of the problem) and not to get drawn into the mire of whining and whinging.

Right, off to climb into the bath while it’s still hot. Will pop back on later with an update on yesterday – we saw Kirsty!