My kids are ghastly.
There, I said it. Now stone me.
I recently got back from a few days away, sans-children. When I arrived home, they both rushed to me and strove to outdo each other with the draping themselves all over me and mashing their faces into my chest and the telling me they luuurved me, and how very much they had missed me...
And then - not twenty minutes later, the big one was all complaining and wounded because she liked the toy I had got for the small one better than the toy I had got for her*. Hot on the heels of this followed a fight between them over being able to 'hold' the preferred toy. Another ten minutes and and a diatribe against me because I said 'no' to the watching of videos on YouTube. Fast forward a whole hour or so and we were into the part of the day where someone had to be reminded to empty the dishwasher, despite it, you know, having been their job forever, which was then undertaken with a maximum of huffing and shoving and slamming of things. Then we had some dinner, while both of them carefully detailed which things about this particular meal were offensive to them. Then we had to move on to the whole yes, you really do you have to have a shower malarkey. Yes, again. Not just the shower again, but the whole fucking argument! Again! Yes, you. Yes, you do need to go first. Why? I don't need to explain why! Just go in the shower already!
You missed me? You know what - I didn't miss you. For several whole days, no-one contradicted me, defied me, gaslighted me, shouted at me, blamed me, complained at me, demanded I referee an impossible situation, turned their nose up at my cooking, or told me I was fat. It was nice. It was really nice. Honestly, if you luuurve me so much, why are you so freaking dedicated to making me miserable!
I got back from my much-anticipated mini-break two days ago, and I have already completely lost my chill. I am so fucking sick of every single thing being an issue, every time it comes up, I'm in real danger of turning into an autocrat. I am, honestly, very nearly worn down enough by this relentless pushback, that I don't very much care whether they love me, or whether they like me, or whether they respect me, even.
I just want them to do as I fucking say, the first time I say it. Every damn time. That is all.
*You will be delighted to hear that the situation was reversed on the following day, when I gave them each a starfish paperweight, and the little one was most put-out at the imagined superiority of the big one's example. And if I had got them exactly the same things, it would have been eye-rolls all around.
I recently got back from a few days away, sans-children. When I arrived home, they both rushed to me and strove to outdo each other with the draping themselves all over me and mashing their faces into my chest and the telling me they luuurved me, and how very much they had missed me...
And then - not twenty minutes later, the big one was all complaining and wounded because she liked the toy I had got for the small one better than the toy I had got for her*. Hot on the heels of this followed a fight between them over being able to 'hold' the preferred toy. Another ten minutes and and a diatribe against me because I said 'no' to the watching of videos on YouTube. Fast forward a whole hour or so and we were into the part of the day where someone had to be reminded to empty the dishwasher, despite it, you know, having been their job forever, which was then undertaken with a maximum of huffing and shoving and slamming of things. Then we had some dinner, while both of them carefully detailed which things about this particular meal were offensive to them. Then we had to move on to the whole yes, you really do you have to have a shower malarkey. Yes, again. Not just the shower again, but the whole fucking argument! Again! Yes, you. Yes, you do need to go first. Why? I don't need to explain why! Just go in the shower already!
You missed me? You know what - I didn't miss you. For several whole days, no-one contradicted me, defied me, gaslighted me, shouted at me, blamed me, complained at me, demanded I referee an impossible situation, turned their nose up at my cooking, or told me I was fat. It was nice. It was really nice. Honestly, if you luuurve me so much, why are you so freaking dedicated to making me miserable!
I got back from my much-anticipated mini-break two days ago, and I have already completely lost my chill. I am so fucking sick of every single thing being an issue, every time it comes up, I'm in real danger of turning into an autocrat. I am, honestly, very nearly worn down enough by this relentless pushback, that I don't very much care whether they love me, or whether they like me, or whether they respect me, even.
I just want them to do as I fucking say, the first time I say it. Every damn time. That is all.
*You will be delighted to hear that the situation was reversed on the following day, when I gave them each a starfish paperweight, and the little one was most put-out at the imagined superiority of the big one's example. And if I had got them exactly the same things, it would have been eye-rolls all around.
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🐾🙂
They DO grow out of it - meanwhile, take plenty of breaks!
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Adolescence – Don’t Fight It!
Adolescent dogs love to get your goat! Often, their greatest pleasure is getting you wound up over some trivial matter, such as refusing to have their paws wiped, stubbornly ignoring your commands to come in from the garden or playing “keep away” with your slippers or TV remote.
Remember, what fuels the misbehaviour is the conflict itself, so avoiding the battle is far more important than trying to win it. This means staying calm and refusing to get engaged in a battle of physical strength or a shouting match with your dog. Instead use your superior brain power to find a way around it.
For example, your dog has a tantrum and starts biting the towel whilst you are wiping his paws. Instead of getting frustrated and engaging in a wrestling match, stop, line up 4 treats on a surface where he can see them and give him 1 treat per paw for good behaviour. It may feel like bribery, but the positive result will prove that rewards work fast.
Imagine your dog runs under the dining table with a tissue. He tries to tempt you to come and take it from him – which you know will end up in confrontation. Don’t engage! Instead, keep your dignity and prevent the situation from escalating by simply walking away and ignoring him.
It’s NOT dominance!
If your dog repeatedly performs a behaviour which you find infuriating, such as barking, attention seeking, or pulling on the lead, ask yourself what’s reinforcing it.
These are not symptoms of dominance. Your dog is not trying to challenge you for leadership. It’s far more obvious and simple than that.
Dogs repeat behaviours that get rewarded
Rewards include eye contact, vocal contact and physical contact. They also include you getting wound up, cross and upset.
If your dog is getting any of these rewards for his misbehaviour, you need to change tactics and stop giving them immediately! Fold your arms, look away and walk out of the room if practically possible. Being ignored is a major consequence for dogs.
Don’t nag!
Question: What happens when you nag someone?
Answer: They ignore you!
Beware of nagging your dog. It’s nearly always better to be calm and quiet so that your dog listens when you do give him a cue. If you find that you are repeating yourself (Fido, come! Fido, stop that! Fido, no!) think about what triggers the behaviour you don’t like and find a strategy to prevent it. This is not giving in – it’s sensible management and will help to maintain a positive relationship between you.
Keep training!
During adolescence, it’s not unusual for owners to wonder if any of the training they did with their puppy was really worthwhile. If it seems like your dog has suddenly lost his hearing, or his desire to do anything to please you – don’t panic! The answer is to make sure that you keep on training.
Go back to basics and reinforce simple tasks, such as “sit” which you can reward your dog for getting right.
Good training can solve all of these irritating habits and more. However, in the meantime, it’s important to prevent them from happening to ensure that your dog doesn’t have a chance to practice them. For example, putting your dog on a lead when visitors arrive is safe and practical. Behaviour management like this may not be all singing and dancing, but it is effective and will save your sanity!
Use rewards wisely
Not all rewards are the same. If you had to list your dog’s favourite things, you might find this ranking would be:
Meaty sticks
Marrowbone biscuit
Squeaky toy
His own kibble
Use this information wisely. If your dog finds “sit” on cue easy, then praise or a piece of dry food is adequate. However, if you want him to do something he finds more difficult, such as coming away from playing with other dogs, you will need to use treats at the top of the list – and lots of them!
How much fun are you?
Once off the lead, your dog is constantly weighing up whether you are worth paying attention to. If you are dull, cross, indifferent or half-hearted, your dog will make the easy decision that everything else is more attractive.
Make sure you are the centre of your dog’s world. Take a toy and play games with your dog, engage in hide and seek, make sudden changes of direction and be FUN!
Recall Rules
Praise is not enough – take really good treats with you and if they do a great recall give them a jackpot reward.
Walk with a friend if their dog has good recall – avoid those that don’t!
Don’t call your dog if you know he is likely to ignore you (i.e. just started to play with another dog)
Practice recall regularly, not just at the end of a free run or if you see a distraction.
Always be positive, even if your dog is slow to return – he will simply learn to ignore you if you reprimand him.
Your clever dog
Finally, it’s so important to realise that while many adolescent dogs can be difficult or challenging, they are also great fun, bright and entertaining.
Enjoy this period in your dog’s life and help set the scene for the adult they are about to become.
Oh, my. That looks like a goldmine. Thank you - nothing like a bit of gallows humour.
"...until January 6th, which is also when the schools go back. I think. I hope. Oh dear god, surely they can't be off any longer than that?"
...yeah...no doubt part of the reason I am clinging precariously to sanity is that mine have been off school since December 11th and are not due to go back for another whole-eight-days-and-oh-god-I-don't-know-if-I-can-make-it....
Realising I am probably the most inept dog parent around. Thank God I forgot to have children.
Eight and eleven. (The eleven-year-old being the less mature of the two).
With the best will in the world you can’t possibly provide them with the level of stimulation and engagement that they get from a large group of their peers and a number of other significant adults - especially if you have to w*rk.
Oh, believe me, I am so grateful to their teachers - and to teachers in general. The big one in particular has benefited greatly in the past two years from a steady hand.
Mine are now 33 and 30 and delightful.
Time heals!
(Being a granny is the best - I recommend skipping the Mum bit!)
Yeah, nah - I mean, firstly, they're not dogs, but more than that, the red flag for me in there is 'how much fun are you?'.
It is really problematic, this emphasis on making things fun. The reality of life is that some things just are.not.fun. But you do them anyway. Such as: periods. Or - emptying the dishwasher. And part of learning to be an adult entails incorporating tasks into your life.
'But I don't want to, but it's boring, but I don't like it.'
Dude - do you seriously imagine I find washing your crusty socks or scraping the dried rice bubbles off the bowl you left out on the dining table all day either interesting or fun?
School, while generally brilliant, is not a help here. Let's make science fun! - and you see the project prompt outline your kid is (enthusiastically, I must admit) working with - and, oh gawd, there really isn't any science in there.
I have a sister-in-law who is an early childhood teacher, with kids just slightly older than mine, and she confided to me a couple of years ago that she expected to have no trouble dealing with a baby, and found the case to be very much otherwise when said baby arrived...
(I never noticed - it looked like she was sailing along merrily to me and I was kinda jealous).
Suggestions that he try finding something else to do that he might want to do are like water off a duck's back because he apparently believes there are loads of minimum wage shop jobs around which he can easily get and live in a bedsit.
This is someone with low social skills and with no work experience and with little understanding of the reality of life on the minimum wage.
Realistically it seems entirely possible he is depressed, but given he refuses any help from anyone, it is hard to see how he can get out of the spiral downwards.
I hate cooking now, because it's turned into a chore, and prompts so much complaining, but several lifetimes ago, I was an amateur baker of some repute - as in, I made wedding cakes for friends and relatives that were actually pretty decent. For my daughter's third birthday, I planned to make a 'Nemo' cake, as 'Finding Nemo' was recently out, and she was a big fan of it.
Well, long story short, I fucked it up not once but twice, and after the fact, I was relating the story to a colleague. I got to the point where I said, 'and after the second one went wrong as well, I sat down on the floor and cried' - and she interrupted me, incredulous. 'You? Sat down on the floor and cried? I can't even imagine it.'
So obviously I have a polished exterior of my own...
That's what social media is all about! You get to see shiny photos of other people with their shiny children and shiny pets visiting shiny vacation destinations or posing in their shiny home, while you know your own life is a slog.
Look. I realise I'm only part-way through the experiment, and I may really, genuinely, have a change of heart at some future point. Or equally I might just fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. But right now, if I could go back in time, with the knowledge I've gained in the past eleven years? I wouldn't do it over.
I agree - the fun bit is about recall. Recall with kids is more um.... complicated!
But the winding up and finding the battle rewarding - absolutely.
Related - the Little Drummer Boy's parents had sent him outside to practice / play before he found his way to the manger. You only notice little details like that after enduring several hours of recorder practice ...
They did grow out of it, I think it all started to die down from the age of 11 or 12.
The Sisyphean task of pushing my son in particular through each day went on for much longer. The weary round of shouting up the stairs "Get up! You're going to miss the school bus!" Stating the obvious "Don't leave your school tie in the fruit bowl" "What do you mean, you can't go to bed because you have homework to do? Why didn't you start it earlier?" Every. Single. Sodding. Day. For. Years.
I hate cooking now, because it's turned into a chore, and prompts so much complaining,
My children got to quite an advanced age without realising what "delicious" meant. I had been in the habit of encouraging them to try new food by saying "It's delicious" They were well through primary school when one of them used "delicious" to mean "weird, but possibly interesting, but probably not, on the balance of probabilities not worth it" and we realised neither of them knew that it meant "tasty."
No. 2 is definitely getting independent, but this sometimes makes her impossible to get ready as well. A toddler has the contortion skills of a snake when they don't want to put a t-shirt on!
I have darkly observed how strange it is that murdering your own children is seen as particularly despicable, rather than the relationship being seen as a mitigating factor...
Actually, to be fair, her kids are great, most of the time anyway. They know how to behave when out, and are well- mannered, a real credit to her. When I tell her that though, she says it doesn’t help.
From day one ours had requests and decisions explained, rarely if ever just a diktat. For example, don't touch the kettle because it's so hot it will burn your hands which will hurt and make you cry; don't run across the road because you may be killed and your twin will be left all alone.
Chores: pocket-money/allowance amount set, announced and divided in two, half an absolute right the rest dependent on jobs being carried out satisfactorily. Extra tasks volunteered for paid extra money. Your money is yours to do with as you like but once spent there is no more till payday.
Above all, never threaten, rather make promises and keep them. If you really can't keep to a promise explain why and what is to happen instead.
Yes, there were disagreements but not many. On many occasions I've overheard them chatting with friends who were moaning about spats with parents and every time mine have said there were few arguments in our house. Both say their memories of childhood are happy and that they hope to have the same with their own children. (Cue swift parental exit due to eye leakage problem.)
Dog training is operant conditioning. It's good parent training for human children.
I miss my kids who're off doing their own things. If I could live a second life would had more. I gravitate to children and adolescents in all circumstances. They are nicer than many adults.
For a great many years, I was their cook, cleaner, taxi driver, healer, teacher and prophet. I was not their friend. And now I am.
Which is nice. But they had their moments...
I explained things to my kids.
"If you don't get up NOW you will miss the school bus and have to spend the day at home" - my son preferred to be at home.
"If you drop your coat on the floor instead of hanging it up, it will get crumpled and dirty" - my son was quite happy with the crumpled look.
"If you abandon your school tie in the fruit bowl you won't be able to find it in the morning" - not something that troubled my son. (He had two ties, he wore Tie A till he lost it, then Tie B until he lost it, by which time Tie A had generally turned up somewhere improbable. )
Then there were the times he did exactly as he was told. A talk by the fire brigade at school introduced a pre-bedtime checking routine which could delay bedtime by quite some time.
The whole thing was relentless, tiring and exhausting.
One of mine is home and read your OP and ensuing posts. After a few rude words he went away for a while and has come back with this.
Remember, there is one adult (?) in the house. You're a parent, not a friend. You set rules and boundaries, not the children. Essentially every parent-child relationship is a dictatorship, preferably benign, but someone has to be in charge and you drew the short straw.
Get calm and then have a formal chat - no interruptions whatsoever because they need to know that they and your relationship with them is more important than work or anything else.
Explain that life can be better for you all if there is less friction. Tell them that although you love them, and will never stop loving them, at the moment you don't like their manner, attitude, and behaviour. Make it crystal clear it is unacceptable and has to stop.
Give them clear rules, starting from tomorrow. Homework must be done as soon as they come home from school, then household chores. Only after that can they do what they want.
Give an ultimatum that arguing won't be tolerated and if they start to argue with each other you'll leave them to it: you're not a referee and you won't umpire their fights.
The house is home for all of you: they can entertain friends with everyone else's agreement. Rudeness to each other's friends, or in front of yours, won't be tolerated and they'll lose the right to have their own friends back for a week if it happens.
Food: they're old enough to start learning how to cook. From now on they cook on a given day (Saturday evening?) for the whole family. Show them where the cookery books are and say you'll be on hand for advice but choice of meal and production of it is down to them.
There: advice from a childless 25 year-old!
At least it wasn't the pipes. I understand that after a while the resonance is able to melt the wax in your ears.
My 3 year old does a fine line in digging her heels in. She has yet to understand that Daddy is autistic and has far more experience of being mule-stubborn than she has. Hence the half hour fight two days ago before she would pick up the food she had knocked onto the floor (spoiler: she picked it up). I have, however, given up trying to force her into coats and jumpers. Every other child may have a puffer jacket, hat gloves and scarf on while she runs around in a dress and wellies with no socks but at some point she'll learn she can play longer if she's not freezing cold.
Our life seemed dominated by ideological arguments with our daughter (the middle child with 2 boys) from when she was about 5. We were very political and ecological and all things Guardian. She, however, wanted to be like "everyone else": eat meat, wear fashions, snack on shop-bought sugar-salt-fat foods, and watch shallow TV shows.
When she was 18 she did a year of National Service with at-risk kids in in a very socio-economically deprived city with all the poverty, drug abuse, dysfunctional families, etc that go with that.
She lived communally and discussed Paolo Freire, et al late into the night with 8 others, They were all Away From Home for the first time. Which of course, combined with their developing social consciences, meant a lot of experiments and changes in lifestyle.
So, she'd come home and tell us how hard it was for everyone else because their parents had no understanding of vegetarians, social justice, etc etc. And she would proceed to tell us how she'd casually say to them "Oh I never have any problems like that with my parents."
That, for me, was even worse than the lifetime of arguments ... in terms of short-circuit sparks in the brain!
I suggest: GIN. (For you, not them!). Or something else "to take the edge off" around 5pm
Seriously it does seem impossible at times ... but it does end, they usually become reasonable-enough adults, and the whole thing becomes history - with the emphasis on "story" as we all have selective memories
And of course we know it's good advice because if it worked for TheOrganist's children it's bound to work for everyone else's...
I have never, ever had any second thoughts or regrets about my decision not to have children.
We turned out to be very infertile and took seven years to conceive. I was desperate for a child by then.
When he arrived it was a shock. The picture I had built up over seven years was complete fantasy. I was hopeless with babies and very glad to get back to work when he was six months old.
I enjoyed teaching - it’s rewarding and the boundaries are easy and clear. Not so at home!
Once mine became adults the joy came back and now I absolutely love spending time with them - and they with me.
I love my granddaughter too, and spend as much time as humanly possible with her.
But I have no time for other people’s kids - 40 years is long enough! We went to an ‘adults only’ hotel in Majorca last year.
Absolute bliss!
The second Mrs BF wanted children, but had two successive miscarriages instead (by this time, sadly, age was against us, anyway).
I (sort of) would have liked to have had a child, but nephews/nieces/cousins' kidz are good, too - I can fill them up with Sugar, and then hand them back!
Mind you - they're all late teenagers/students now, and about to rule the World, so perhaps I'd better be nice to them...
I agree - I've found that not telling children 'Don't run into the road' and 'Don't play hopskotch on the third rail' means those children cease to be problems quite quickly and efficiently.
Yeah, we do all this and explain our rules too, and my son is still a high-strung nabob of negativity and constant complaints. He just is a naturally anxious, uptight person. (I can't imagine where he got it!)
I think the main thing that non-parents don't understand is how little correlation there is between a parent's efforts and the child's actual behavior. You can take away electronics and send to bed without dessert and scold until you're blue in the face, but it won't make a bit of difference unless the child decides they want to behave.
A while ago, Ricardling #1 fell off the climbing frame and then, after whimpering for a bit, climbed back on and had another go. So I praised him for carrying on and not giving up in the face of setbacks. And now I wonder why he carries on and doesn't give up trying to filch cake from the kitchen in the face of setbacks such as Daddy telling him not to ...
Given the massive amount of evidence that punishment is an ineffective and unreliable way of changing behaviour, I don’t find that very suprising.