Turning Molehills into Mountains

There are days when I simply get fed up of the fight. You know the one; the one where your children just seem to want a battle at every turn. It is just too exhausting and the bizarre thing is that it is often those little niggly things that can seem quite small and insignificant that often turn into the biggest fights of all.Take this as an example.

R has an iPod touch. It is his favourite thing in the whole world. In fact I I would probably go as far as to say that if it was a choice between saving me or the iPod, I would not be in luck.

I don’t mind that he loves his iPod so much, but it turns him into a monster. He doesn’t like letting it go and he has to know exactly where it is at any given moment. I do limit the time he is allowed on it, but when he isn’t playing on it, he has to stroke it every now and then and switch it on and off.

The positive side of this love is that it makes a great weapon. If he is rude/annoying/naughty, we threaten to take away his ‘precious’ and he jumps back into line quick smart.

I went our for a meal Tuesday night and he must have really upset daddy as he had been given a one day ban and my husband had hidden the iPod on the top of one of our high cupboards.

We were late arriving home yesterday and I was rushing around making tea. After tea, all was quiet upstairs, but when I slowly walked upstairs to see what everyone was up to, R suddenly leaped out of the chair like something has bitten him. I knew straight away what he had been doing. Maybe a parental instinct? Maybe the very stupid and guilty look all over his face?  I asked him what he was doing and he started leaping around like a demented thing saying “nothing, nothing, nothing”.  Again, my motherly senses sensed that this was somewhat unusual behaviour.

I went into the living room and sure enough, there it was his precious iPod that he must have risked life and limb to rescue from the top of the cupboard to play on while the coast was clear.

“You’ve been playing on your iPod, haven’t you?”
“No!” (in a very uncharacteristically squeaky voice)
“I know that you have, you have got it down and started playing on it, when you know that you are banned.”
“I was checking something on the Internet!”
“No you weren’t, you were playing on Minecraft!”
“No I wasn’t!” R is now shouting.
“I don’t like lying, why don’t you just own up?”
At this point R with tears in his eyes stomps up to his room shouting “You never believe me!”

This ‘argument’ lasted for hours.  I tried every tactic I could to get him to admit the truth and he stomped, cried, shouted and even said at one point that his brother had made him do it (his brother was playing downstairs blissfully unaware of this whole sorry scenario).  I tried to explain calmly to him that lying really wasn’t the way to go and that if he keeps telling lies, he will get caught out and that he really is on to a loser.  At this point, he became very irate again and told me that I had really hurt him saying that.  I was a little bemused by this and asked why.

“You just called me a loser!”

I explained what the phrase ‘being on to a loser’ meant and he calmed down and finally admitted that he had lied and that he had decided to play on the iPod as he thought he wouldn’t get caught and then the lies just came “out of nowhere”.

When I was explaining this to my husband later on I wondered to myself if these little things are worth getting so worked up over. I understand that R is maybe starting to show signs of becoming a tweenager and you can blame hormones, tiredness and everything else, but at the end of the day, you have to make a stand sometimes or these little people will walk all over you.

It is exhausting though.