We are so used to being able to get what we want, when we want. If I want to see what people are up to I can check facebook – day or night – and see what my friends are feeling/thinking/doing there and then. If I want news I can get on the net. If I want to be entertained I can put on the TV and surf far too many channels until something takes my fancy or if not I can go through IQ and see what I have taped and watch it. Life pretty much is on demand for me. We work hard to have all these things available to us – we have gotten used to it and think we even deserve it.
I am finding it challenging to explain to Daisy that life is not really “on demand”. All she has known so far in life is that if she wants something (food/drink) she asks and she gets it. As she has been getting older she has been getting more demanding. Of my attention, of what she wants and likes and then she wants it all over again. I have a new found understanding of the oldest child in a family – of the time and attention they have had from their Mum and Dad that other siblings will never get no matter how hard you try. How the lessons they learn and the hardest, they have no one small to learn from, to protect them – it’s just them and you – going through it all for the first time and learning along the way.
Daisy is a fiery little girl (wonder where she gets that from!) she is funny, and bubbly and outgoing and STUBBORN. When she finds something that she loves, she loves it with ALL she has. She is passionate in her love – obsessive even – and consumed by it. As she has been getting older she has been able to explain to us a little better what she loves/wants. Ever since we went away last week and she went on a plane she has a new found LOVE for planes. She is slightly obsessed. When we are out in the car and she sees one out the window she says “plane, plane” maybe a couple of hundred times – you think I am kidding but I’m not. She wants another plane to appear and she wants it now. Sure enough she will see another and I guess she thinks she has made it appear so it starts up again another hundred times or so. We have tried to explain to her (as best a 21 month old will understand) that we can’t just make them appear. We have to wait and hopefully (for Mummy’s sanity anyway) another will appear soon enough. This has been challenging to say the least, I have tried to ignore her – for the love of sweet baby jesus I have tried to ignore her – but by the 342nd time you start to crack you know? You think I may just drive us into that truck if you don’t stop saying plane – and it inevitably ends in tears (mostly her, sometimes me!). I guess this is just another freakin‘ “phase”…that as she starts to communicate more and grow she has SO much she wants to experience and share with us but doesn’t yet have the tools to do it properly. This will be one of many lessons in her little life where she will learn that she can’t always gets what she wants…it will be a lesson for me to sometimes take the harder road and be tough on her rather than just letting her get what she wants as it’s easier (for me) to give it to her and keep her quiet and happy and keep the peace. It’s hard to find the balance of giving them everything that you can because you well…can…and it makes them happy….and teaching them that they can’t always have what they want just because they well…want it.
So I am going to try to be a little tougher. To give her some space from me. For me to let go and not be such a control freak. Not give her everything she wants there and there. Allow some screaming and tantrums and not let them bother me. Encourage her to play by herself. And let her wait…..a little while….or until I crack!
