Lily Laments

In accordance with the 6 year old book, I tried a new technique last weekend with Lily. According to the book, six year olds are contrary and difficult and drive you crazy, but need constant reassurance for their fragile egos. Made sense to us, as we were in a downward spiral of Liliness. The first two or three times you ask her to do something like brush her teeth she pretends she doesn’t hear you. Or does hear you, looks right at you, then simply goes back to what she was doing, “Make me” written all over her face. Then comes the decision: do I enforce my authority and do battle, or just let her damn teeth rot. The book’s suggestion was to pick your battles, avoid direct orders whenever possible (because the inevitable answer will be no), when you get resistance, just pretend like it isn’t happening, and the golden technique: give praise.

So, last weekend, I lavished praise on Lily. Preemptive praise. As soon as she woke up, and before she had a chance to really say anything, I commented on how great she had been that morning – no whining!-- and how I was really looking forward to spending the day with her. That got a smile and started the morning off well. I thanked her for being so helpful before I asked her to help me with something, I took every opportunity to tell her she was good at whatever it was she was doing. It had an amazing effect and the entire weekend went fairly smoothly with smiles and snuggles rather than whining and battles. Lily loved the attention, while fully copped on to the technique: “Hey Lily...” Lily interrupts, “I know what you’re going to say, Mom. You think I’m great.”

Despite her perceptiveness, her six year old self needed the praise. And since I’ve been away at work most of the week, she’s begun fishing for it in the evenings. These have turned into her tired laments centered on the theory that she’s not good at anything because Molly can do everything better than her.

Last night, clearly looking for new material, Lily sat at the dinner table, twirling her fork in the air, watching Molly and Shaun and I gobble our food. “I’m always the last one to finish eating; everybody eats faster than I do. It’s not fair.” “Well, Lily, you know there’s a direct correlation between eating and finishing your food. If you sit there and don’t eat, then you will finish after those who are eating.” Lily, not to be deterred by logic, rolled her eyes and put her head on the table, and whined with all the tragedy she could muster, “but it’s NOT FAIR!”

After dinner (which she never finished) I held her in my lap while she went through a mental list of things she wasn’t good at. I let her moan her way through it, then, prepared with my own list of encouragements, began, “But Lily, there are lots of things you ARE good at....” Lily cut me off, her voice dripping with sarcasm: “Yeah, like GETTING SICK AND DYING.”

I believe I’ve mentioned this before: I can’t wait until she’s a teenager.