WWYD? DS moved furniture. refused to move it back. threw up from crying.

[lizajane]

here's the story-

first element to the story is that my child has some mental health issues and is in therapy. so not your average bear.

schuyler and dylan moved a bunch of chairs- kitchen ladder back chairs, dining room chairs and PBK anywhere chairs- to the bottom of the stairs in front of the back door. dylan went to church with daddy. schuyler and i are going to a birthday party in 45 minutes (was one hour from when this started.)

the dog door is blocked, so i told schuyler he had to put all the chairs back before we went to the party. while he did this, i was going to eat a bowl of cereal. schuyler immediately started whining/crying and saying that he couldn't possibly move the furniture back, it was too hard, he couldn't lift it, it would take too long, it wasn't fair, etc etc.

i explained that if he did not clean up the mess HE made, we would not go to the party. end of story.

he continued to whine incessantly and started sobbing. i continued to stand my ground, telling him that it was not up for discussion. clean up or don't go. period.

he sobbed until he threw up. (this happens during this sort of fit.)

he is currently moving the furniture, sobbing, yelling, moaning, groaning... more "this isn't fair" and lots of "dylan shouldn't have moved these chairs!" and "it's too hard! i can't lift it!" (it took 15 minutes of hysterical fit for him to start.)

for the record, dylan is 3 and about a FOOT smaller and 20lbs lighter than schuyler. schuyler is a very large, very strong 5 year old. in sort of a scary way. and i SAW schuyler moving chairs this morning.

so now i am going to check the status of the clean up.

what else can i do?????? he is FIVE. i can't just excuse him from cleaning up his own mess because he has some anxiety/ADHD etc going on. and while i often do pull the "let's do it together" trick, he HAS to be able to do it for himself, too. dylan would have just moved the chairs back, no questions asked. he probably would have sung the clean up song, too. ;)

[JTsMom]

Those kinds of things make me want to pull my hair out, so here's a :hug: for you first.

I *think* Schuyler and Jason have similar personalities, so I'll throw this out there- humor is one thing that works sometimes here. It helps diffuse the power struggle. If Jason had said the chair was too heavy, for example, I might say, "Hmm. let me see." then pushed it really hard and sent it flying (assuming it was soft and wouldn't be damaged of course) and play-fallen and said, "Hey! I thought you said it was heavy??!!!" in mock outrage. Hopefully, he'd laugh, I'd do one more goofy thing, then said, "ok, we'd better hurry and get this straightened up so we can get to the party! Please get it done, and I'll be right back to let you know I'm ready to leave."
ETA: If you haven't read it yet, Playful Parenting has a lot of this stuff in it, and it has helped me in quite a few situations.

Just one example.

Having said that, I wonder if Schuyler could just be testing the limits now that he knows he has this new diagnosis, kwim? I've heard of this happening with kids with heart conditions. They want to figure out what the diagnosis means. Does it mean I can say I can't pick up chairs? Does it mean mom will let more slide? Maybe if I put on a really good show it will work? I don't mean any of this in a bad way- more of a discovery way, if that makes sense. He might just be trying to define what his diagnosis means in his day to day life.

FWIW, I think you handled it well.

[mommy111]

Oh, Liza, hugs! At least you made him do it and he did. With everything going on in his life, including the new diagnosis and having to take meds, I am sure things are hard for him and yet he did it. Good kid!!!!
Everything is a constant power struggle with my 4 year old daughter (and I'm usually losing, either losing control and yelling or more often just giving up). And my kid doesn't even have an ADHD diagnosis (well...yet) My mom asks her to do the same thing, she does it. The teacher asks her to, she does it. I think kids just limit test their moms. As in 'lets see how soon I can give mom grey hair and wrinkles and get her to look like the 80 year old lady next door'
I'll read this thread closely for other mommy suggestions and I'm looking for other book recs as well.

[lisams]

We have similar moments (although DD doesn't throw up or get super upset) I get the "it's not fair" whine, stomp, grumble-grumble bit and it drives me insane!

I've struggled with this because a while back we had a playmate over and her friend was playing with some blocks (which DD wasn't) and I asked DD to help her clean up and her response was something like "I didn't make the mess, if she got the blocks out she needs to clean them all up." I was totally hearing her say what I say to her and I didn't like how it sounded. So now I try to model what I would want her todo in the same situation. Something like "It sounds like you'd like some help. I'll pick up this and this while you work on the rest. It feels good helping you out and working together." It sounds kind of cheesy, and sometimes I can't help her out and just tell her it's one of those moments where she's going to need to take care of it herself since I'm super busy or whatever. But we still have those moments, it is so frustrating, I feel for you.

Hope you guys made it to the party and that the "storm" has passed. You're an amazing mom!

[psophia17]

That's exactly what I would've done with N. He's not quite five, and he makes such an *issue* out of everything. Sometimes I say I won't help until more than half the mess is taken care of, or I come up with something I need to do first (this is a good trick for getting him to put his shoes on - I wish I knew why putting his own shoes on is such a big deal), and offer to help after I'm done doing my own getting ready. "I will help you after I eat my cereal and clean up my own mess, you get started so we can finish fast once I'm ready."

N is also big into deals - not sure if that's true for D or not - and it works pretty well to make deals about his own mess. A quiet reminder that we already talked about going/doing something fun, and that we weren't going to go if the things that needed to get done didn't get done, would get N back on the task at hand. This is also a good one with two kids, "if you clean up R clean up ABC, I will help you clean up XYZ, and we'll be ready to go faster."

GL, Liza, it's not easy!

[MommyAllison]

My DD is a couple years younger, but we had a similar situation recently where she spilled some popcorn on the floor (on purpose) and I asked her to clean it up. Huge meltdown, turned into a power struggle that only finally resolved when DH came home. It was horrible. Since then, I've realized that if I can figure out a way to diffuse the situation when it starts to escalate, DD will often happily do what I've asked. I think she just gets so emotionally upset that she can't calm herself down enough to do anything but freak out. For her, she needs to go be by herself somewhere for a few minutes to calm down, then we talk about it, and then I ask her to try again. We follow the Positive Conclusion method described in Parenting is Heart Work by Turansky and Miller, and it works really well for us. Hugs Liza! I know it is so difficult.

[Melanie]

Oh yes, I get things like that all of the time, from BOTH of my children now. With Ds, he is nearly 7 and it's time for him to become a little more independent and self-sufficient. I try to be encouraging with him to do things which he says are "hard." With Dd, she's just stubborn. That girl will try to do ANYthing and EVERYthing, if she wants to. She throws fits, tantrums (hello? A WHAT? I'd never seen one of those in my home before she came along), etc. I just stay firm that she needs to XYZ because she ABC or else we cannot/won't have time for 123 and I must do 789 to get ME/Car/bag ready to go.

With general clean up, I do often try to join in and 'let's do it together." Games work well with Ds if it's something he just doesn't WANT to do, and not something he thinks he can't do. For example:
How many things can you pick up before I count to 10?
How fast can you pick up 10 things?
Let's each pick up 3 things as fast as we can!

Today, however, I was sewing and he was completely in my space and all over my sewing things with this magnet of his, seeing what was metal. Cute, right? Sort of. For about the first 2 minutes. I'd asked him a few times not to use it on my sewing machine or near my pins. He then put it IN a box of pins. Yeah, so they all stuck to it. He insisted he couldn't take them off it was too hard, he'd get poked, etc. etc. Again, he's nearly 7. I was firm that I'd asked him repeatedly not to use the magnet near my project, this is what happend since he didn't listen and he had to take them off himself. I encouraged him to do it slowly, just be careful, etc. Of course some protesting/whining ensued, but he did it. When he finished I said something like, "See, it was hard but YOU DID it on your own!" He actually smiled. LOL. NOW back off from my sewing stuff, kid! ;)