I find myself on a daily basis feeling so thankful to have N with me during the summer, and yet, ready to throttle her at the same time.
She can be so good with the boys....providing them entertainment, watching over them for a moment or two while I run off to pee alone, caring for them in a loving way. Being a "surrogate" mother of sorts.
But being a child of 6 years, she doesn't understand that this doesn't mean she is "The Mom." She doesn't get to issue ultimatums to them. She doesn't determine what the boys do and do not get. She shouldn't offer suggestions that she doesn't have the ability to provide or that really aren't in the boys' best interests.
She is forever saying to G, "If you don't do [whatever it is she wants him to do] I'm going to put you on the steps [or whatever disciplinary measure she deems appropriate]." Or she will try to pick him or M up and move them where she wants them, even though both of them are half her size, and she doesn't have the strength of an ant.
Although I try to thank her for being sweet to them, or playing with them nicely, I spend more time saying, "N, you are not their mom," or the nicely generic, "N, knock it off."
And she doesn't understand that because she is the Big Sis, G wants to do everything she does, and so therefore I can't have her crawling through the diaper box shelves at Target (which she shouldn't be doing anyway for obvious reasons) or running ahead in front of me at the store because G will run ahead, out of control.
Correcting her usually results in a temporary stop to the behavior because she understands in a way that the 2-year-old doesn't. When I correct G, half the time he thinks it's a game or merely a suggestion on my part.
Sometimes I think I need to explain all of this to N more than I do, but I have explained it to her in as many ways as I can think. But she is a child and her understanding of it and her attention to it are limited. So I guess I will riding this out for the next 6 weeks until school begins again, and I can be the one and only Mom.
2 comments:
Carrie! We have lots of this too. Between Harper and Michael. She offers him things I don't want him to have and I also catch her bossing him around telling him he'll have a time out if he doesn't share, etc. It is so frustrating.
Maybe I shouldn't have a double standard, but I find myself telling her she can't talk to Michael the way I do sometimes (or the way I sometimes talk to her) because she is a CHILD and children don't talk to other children or grown ups that way.
With Harper I find myself often forgetting that she has the self-control/judgement of a five-year-old because she seems so much older sometimes.
We also have the same issues of her doing something and then Michael copying w/ more disasterous consequences. Today it was jumping off the stairs at my parents' house.
I guess all if this is just to say, I know what you mean and you're not alone!
I have a couple of mini-moms too. Jonah just kind of brushes it off when Audrey tries to mother him, but Bailey takes it a little too far with Audrey. I always tell her, "If you want to do the correcting-and-fussing part of my job, you also have to do the rest of it - fixing food, wiping bottoms..." She usually gives me a look that borders on eye-rolling, but she stops mothering...for the moment.
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