Learning Lessons #9-Fits

Fits. I’ve been dealing with them for the better part of 20 years. I’ve seen my share! I can remember being a new mom and trying to give choices to lure the child out of the fit. I can remember being a little more seasoned mom and trying to be stern and give NO choices to lure the child out of the fit. As time and children have gone on, I’ve tried different methods, only to find that what works with one child on one day may very well not work for any other child (not even that one) on any other day.

Now that Gabi and Luke-Xavier have started school, their days are full of routine and they are getting used to authority figures other than me. They don’t like this! They’ve each put in their fair amount of effort to try to be in charge in the their classrooms. I work in the preschool through lunch and when nap time comes, I’m off. So, each day, they line up to be ready to nap and I grab my purse and go. They’ve caught on to the routine and have decided that nap time doesn’t seem so great because Mom won’t be there anymore.

Yesterday I got a call from the preschool director saying that Luke-Xavier had been having a stubborn fit for the better part of an hour and did I have anything that I normally do to help him stop a fit. I snickered a little, because I know how VERY stubborn he is. I know that when he throws a fit, it goes until he’s finally exhausted and falls asleep. We’ve tried many things with him, but I didn’t have any thing I could give her that would make him stop right away. I felt bad because I knew he was disrupting all the kids that were actually trying to sleep. I knew he must be really tired because every other day of school, he’s fallen asleep quickly and slept like a rock. But I also knew that if I went to get him that the fits would go on each day and he’d learn that if he throws a fit for long enough, Mom will come get him. So, we made the decision that he couldn’t win or we’d be done for the year! We decided to just let him finish the fit on his own and that when he was finally tired enough, he’d crash. I gave her permission to just leave him asleep, wherever he may land and to keep up the regular routine with the rest of the class. The last thing I wanted her to think she had to do was wake up a child that had finally fallen asleep 5 minutes earlier and then have to deal with the aftermath of his sleepiness.

He did, in fact, fall asleep on the classroom floor and he woke up feeling much better. Let’s hope that he learned the lesson that throwing a fit doesn’t bring me back to “rescue” him from nap time.

So, I guess this lesson in the Learning Lessons series is actually 2 lessons, one for the parent and one for the child. It’s about sticking to the routine and standing firm so that the child learns that they can’t be in charge of controlling the it. It’s a hard lesson!

Have a great day~