Let Me Count the Ways

This morning, we have a very grumpy Lily...for reasons we're not yet sure of. And when Lily's grumpy, any little thing will set her off into a stream of tears, whining, and writhing on the floor. From that point on, EVERYTHING, any perceived slight, will start the tears again.

This morning, the catalyst was when her two shows for the morning were over and it was time to turn off the tv. The next injustice was being told no when she asked to play games on the iPod (she's not very good about stopping when we say it's time or accepting that she doesn't need to play it all day, so we've severely limited the game time). The final straw, apparently, was that Erik was sitting on the ottoman in Timothy's room while I fed him a bottle and there wasn't any room for Lily to sit.

"You're MEAN!!!" It's the new phrase du jour, and we hear it at least once a day. How? we asked. She proceeded to tick off the ways on her fingers.

"You won't let me watch a show. You won't let me play games on your phone. You won't let me sit where I want. That's FOUR MEANS!" Like mean is now a noun and you can add up the number means in a day.

Wait a minute...wasn't that only three? So she ticked them off again.

"No, it's FOUR! You won't let me watch a show. You won't let me play games on your phone. Or the iPod..."

Oh....so the phone and the iPod were two separate transgressions.

So we're slowly working through the injustices of the world and trying to teach her that, no, sometimes she doesn't get to do everything she wants. What confuses me is that we've never let her just do everything she wanted whenever she wanted it. So where did this sense of entitlement come from? Where did the impatience and not wanting to wait her turn come from? Is it just her age, or did we wreck her somehow? I guess all we can do it be consistent (that's always the key, isn't it: be consistent) and hope that she's just testing the boundaries. And that usually works. I mean, right now, she's playing just as happy as can be with non-electronic toys. Remember those??? It's just the journey of getting her calmed down enough to remember there are other things to do. Man, it's exhausting.