A couple of weeks ago Alina told me that she thought that Rachael was starting to develop an attitude. You could imagine my surprise: where would she get an attitude from? Certainly not me. I’m too patient and calm for her to get something like that from me (lol). Anyway, when she told me that, I thought that now is when we need to start dealing with it, rather than letting it go for years and then wondering what happened.
Rachael is generally a very happy baby and makes us very happy parents, but we have noticed that she seems to be faking some of her fits to get attention lately. That happened monday night. Everything was fine, she was getting lots of good attention, and then mommy walked out of the room. Apparently, Rachael was not going to be happy with me because she wanted mommy, so she got herself worked up and started screaming, but I was more determined to get her out of her mood than she was to continue screaming.
I held her for about 45 minutes; her fighting me the entire time. We were having a test of wills, and I was not ready to give up on our first one-on-one, because if I gave up now I would be run over every time from here on out. Every time that Alina walked in the room Rachael would hold out her arms thinking that mommy would save her, but we were determined not to let her start getting between us, or we would be doomed to many years of “mommy, daddy said I couldn’t go out and play.” We want to be united in everything that we do with her and would loose major ground if Rachael thought that she could get away from what she didn’t like about me and go to Alina.
It was a test of wills, but fortunately, I had more of a will to continue shaping a happy and loving child rather than a spoiled, manipulative brat. So I, very patiently (surprisingly), kept at it with her and was finally able to calm her down. I’m sure that this was only the first in an uncountable number of tests, and I only hope that I have strength and patience enough to continue on this course.
And that’s the wonderful thing about babies, they learn, but they forgive. She is just as happy with me now as she was before our one-on-one, and that’s good for me because the saddest thing for me would be for her to not want to be around me. I love her too much for her to be mad at me, but at the same time I also love her too much to let her grow up without discipline. Too many parents throw in the towel, but Rachael’s happiness is too important to give up on.
