Tonight my plan was to brush the girls’ teeth, read them a story and let my wife put them to bed. Unfortunately, Destroyer tried to bring an armful of stuffed toys into the bathroom with her. When she dumped them on the floor and I asked her to remove them, I didn’t realise all hell would break loose.[more] She refused, so I picked them up and put them away. At which point she threw herself to the floor and began screaming, and, apart from a brief pause to annoy my wife by spitting, screamed at ear piercing, window rattling volume for more than half an hour.
I did want to relent and fetch her mother, as Destroyer kept demanding, but that would set the precedent that screaming gets you what you want. So instead I sat in the bathroom with her and told her I loved her while she screamed, and after twenty minutes went out to do the washing up, while she screamed on the kitchen floor, and about ten minutes after that, when she was finally too exhausted to scream any more, she let me hug her and brush her teeth and give her back her toys.
Which she would have had in one minute if she hadn’t pulled her tantrum. Oh well.
Thankfully she wasn’t permanently angry at me. She gave me a hug, then asked for me to put her to bed tonight.
And then when I got her into bed, she asked for her mother again. What price loyalty? At least La Serpiente slept through it all…