All for a hug

Seen this morning. A 5 year old refusing to share her cup with her 2 year old sister. 2 year old sister ran behind the couch with a grumpy face. 5 year old sister went behind the sofa and said "Ben (sister in gujerati) will share it with you if you give me a big hug" 2 year old grins and hugs her sister so tight the cup and the sisters fell on the floor laughing.

And all I am thinking while watching this is "Wonder if it gets better than this if I had another one?"

Ms. Mousy the bully

Alysha is becoming quite of a bully. Initially I was just surprised as I always feared that Ms. Mousy would be the one being bullied in school. But this mouse is roaring quite a bit now.

I have seen her bully Gitanjali, Inaya, Kakak Siti and now she has moved on to Inarah. She messes with her hair, pulls her pants down, snatches things from her, says nasty things, manipulates her and all kinds of stuff that I never would have thought my 5 year old little mousy was capable of. Sri did mention that she does it only with those whom she is comfortable with.

The past 2-3 weeks have been difficult on me and Inarah. Inarah for being bullied and me for trying not to intervene so much and hoping its just sisters discovering their boundaries with each other. Inarah of course throws a fit, bites, cries and comes running to me for rescue when she is bullied.

So what do I do here? I started by telling Alysha that its not a nice thing to do, Inarah does not like it and that she should stop it. But it didn't work. I then started scolding her, again threatening punishment and I have even spanked her for it. It still has not stopped. I am not there all the time so there has to be a way of managing this without my presence.

What would you do?

Losing it, over a napkin

You know I am a good mom. Pleasant, patient, well manered, caring, open to reason, you can go on.

And I was doing all those things when I took my my 5 year old and 2 year old to IKEA. And so we all had a great time, you know, hot dogs for lunch followed by ice cream, singing in the car all the way home. And so it's only natural to expect the day to end in a equally pleasent mood.

So we get home and excitedly open up this colorful storage thing that we bought from IKEA, which I had intended to use as a laundry basket for the kids and placed it in the room.

And so, my 2 year old is so exited and wasted no time putting a napkin in which she used to wipe her wet hands. A while later my 5 year old changes her clothes and puts them in the laundry basket and "RAAAAAAAAAAAH". No, not Harry's dinasour but something had got into my 5 year old. She roared, she wailed, she screamed, she stomped and did every single thing that I did not expect her to do.

All for the fact that there was a NAPKIN IN THE LAUNDRY BASKET. Its not a place for napkin. Its only for clothes.

So what would a pleasant, patient, well manered, caring, open to reason mom like me do? Let her finish throwing her tantrum and patiently reason with her about the napkin, something like that right?. But it's the way she did the whole thing, showing she was incharged and she decided what went where. Now that really threw me off. And so there was a need, an overwhelming need to exert my authority as her mother, as the person whose rules you follow. And as much as she insisted that the NAPKIN should be OUT I ensured that it remained IN. And needless to say that I won the battle shamelessly exerting my authority as an adult, threatening punishment and injury, for which I am so very shameful now.

Why does it happen? Why do we end up like this? I really don't know. She is clearly behaving like a 5 year old but why do I feel the need to behave like one as well?