Errrrrrt!
Someone once put it to me this way: B and Po...they meet somewhere around age seven.
So, basically, I have seven-year-old twin boys. Do you have more sympathy for me, now?
The most common issue is that B (13) tries to play with one of Po's (3) toys that he hasn't even glanced at for at least two weeks or two months. Then Po freaks as if the million dollar lottery ticket has suddenly been plucked from his saintly hands. Then B plays the most masterful game of keep-away, demanding that Po listen to his parental lesson about how he wasn't even using it, and how he needs to ask nicely and wah wah wah wah wah wah out of the Charlie Brown teacher's edition. The reasoning goes on and on beyond any reasonable attention span for a person in a coma, much less an anxious and wronged three-year-old.
My problem: No matter how many times we go through this, I can't convince the teen thing that he's not a parent, and I can't convince the toddler thing that he's not the Tasmanian devil. When the two collide, I sometimes feel I deserve a stiff drink or some sort of medal of honor. Or both.
This evening we had some friends over for dinner, and just as we're clearing the table, and they are packing up to leave, and all the kids are going ape-shit and the parents are ready to loose their freaking minds, the parental teen thing decides it would be a good time to find a toy that the toddler thing hasn't used in a while.
You should know enough now. I don't have to go into the details. Fast-forward to the toy being confiscated and apologies being said to the friends and the teen thing sulking in his room, isolated from the chaos he artfully arranged.
I put the littles in the bath and summoned the teen thing.
"I get the feeling you aren't listening to me," I say to B, "and I get the feeling you don't think I'm listening to you. So you talk as long as you like, and I won't say a thing. I'll just listen. You let me know when I can respond. You're in charge of when I can talk."
A suppressed smile came across his face. The littles were splashing happily in the tub while I sat on the closed toilet and B sat on the bathroom counter.
I truly listened, and the teen thing rambled some stuff about how he wanted Po to listen to him, and how Po shouldn't throw a fit, and how, bottom line: "Po doesn't play with the stuff and only shows interest when I pick it up!"
I understand and understood, then instructed him on how to maybe, when there's a conflict with Po, not go on and on and on beyond the attention span of a three-year-old. The teen thing hasn't gotten it and still doesn't really get it. Everyone is a peer in his eyes. So I gave him a script for the future:
"When you have taken something of Po's and he is freaking because he wants it back, if only because you have it, just say 'Po, please stop freaking out and ask me for it nicely like a big boy.' Po knows what that means, and it's all but guaranteed that he'll ask nicely. If he doesn't, just come to me and say 'Kristen, I need help.' Don't take matters into your own hands. I know you love the Harry Potter battles, but I don't want to see them in our home."
After some going back and forth, I think B and I ended up having a really constructive conversation. So he went on with his evening, and I with mine, bathing the littles. Luckily Daddy had arrived home during the teen-thing conversation, so I didn't have to go the remainder of the evening alone.
And I could walk away from the bathtub to pour myself a cocktail.
When I came back, Po said "Mommy, brother and I have a conflict sometimes, and I don't like it when he just snatches my thing from my hands. It really causes a conflict, and I don't like to have a conflict with brother, so, I was thinking that we shouldn't have a conflict and that brother should just give me the thing because that's the cause of the conflict so that we don't have a conflict because it really irritates me when he takes something from me and we have a conflict."
"Really? Really." I'm flabbergasted.
"Yeah," Po continues, "and I think you need to tell Campbell that she always causes a conflict, too. When she takes things from me, it is the cause of the conflict. We need to not have the conflicts."
Daddy interjected. "So, Porter, do you ever take things from Campbell, possibly causing a conflict?"
"No." Pause. "I'm ready to get out of the bathtub, now."
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