Monday, November 23, 2009

The “Phone War” Escalates

Round two of the “phone war”: Tonight, at 10:45 PM, as I was trying to get Ricki into bed, I saw her grab my phone book (from which she always copies her friends phone numbers), and the portable phone.
-Ricki, you are NOT making any phone calls!
-Just a short call to Ruchi.
-Ruchi is ASLEEP! And YOU should ALSO be so!! Go brush your teeth.
[Ricki starts looking the number up.]
-Give me that phone book, and go brush your teeth!
[Ricki ignores me. As I try to get the phone from her, she dodges around to the other side of the table, and keeps staying opposite to me as I move.
Now at this point I should have calmly thought of a consequence, or gone to call help, calmly, but I didn’t.]
[I turn off the electricity. This has a dual purpose. Ricki can not use the phone, and also sees I mean business. It also brings her exasperated older brother ,(i.e., the cavalry backup troops) who now has torn himself away from the temporarily darkened computer screen. I had called him earlier, but he didn’t hear me.]
Ricki’s brother: “WHY IN THE WORLD DID YOU DO THAT?”
-“Ricki is dodging me, standing on the other side of the table. Grab the phone from her!”
[He grabs the phone and hisses at his sibling, “If you don’t listen to Mommy, you will hear about it from me!”
15 minutes later she was sound asleep. [Partly due to her brother’s intervention, and even more due to my (once I could reach Ricki) putting the phone book WELL out of her reach.]
I think I should have handled it better.... Just not sure exactly how yet......

4 comments:

RivkA with a capital A said...

turning off the electricity was clever. A simple solution.

It's great that your son backs you up.

Staying Afloat said...

I go through this all the time. I use some sort of forceful action to stop what's happening, because that's important, but there isn't necessarily a lesson learned. And, you worry about the implications of the actions, especially as they affect the siblings.

Sometimes, you have to go for this type of thing, I think, especially when you really have to stop the action right away or when your kid isn't thinking clearly enough to understand or care about the consequence (like when she's exhausted). But who likes dancing around their kids?

You had a smart idea- maybe next time, you could unplug the phone base from the wall?

RivkA with a capital A said...

oh, unplugging the phone is even better!!

Batya said...

It worked, so it's good! Fantastic that you have an "ally," even if he's just out for his own reasons, electricity for the computer.