January 27, 2011

Little Miss Negativity.

Sassy has been displaying some strange qualities as of late...

She's rather become the little pessimist around here, and I'm not quite sure I fancy that.

First off, she's been prefacing requests with I-know-the-answer-will-be-no-but...

I mean, really?!?

In all honesty, I would say Sassy gets a yes response here a lot more often than a no response when it comes to making requests. We try pretty hard to stay positive and allow her to do things that she wants to do within reason, so I'm at a loss for where this is coming from.

She also has major issues with we'll see.

I must admit, I use we'll see pretty frequently. But, it's almost always a we'll see pending good behavior or a we'll see taking into account contributing factors and rarely a we'll see meaning I'm too lazy to deal with the ramifications of no or a we'll see as in fat chance. I'm not a big proponent of stringing my children along.

Well, lately, any time I say we'll see, Sassy says, but that always turns into a NO.

Applesauce.

As in, not.a.chance, Missy.

Really, though, it doesn't.

So, I don't know what's caused Sassy to be so sketchy. It's like she doesn't trust me or something. It makes me sad.

Have any of you gone through this with your little ones? Any advice for one SPH Mama?

2 sweet tweets:

rduxler said...

Honestly, I think its just a testing behavior. Adelyn has been doing the same thing by using always and never A LOT. As in 'you ALWAYS say no' (really? Because I'm pretty sure I don't!), and 'you NEVER let us do {insert activity here}' which is of course not actually true. I mean, she's almost on auto-pilot with it.

I do my best to honestly ignore it as much as possible. Or I'll say, 'I'm pretty sure that's not true.' Trying to get into debates with her about it is of course totally useless (even though I've made the mistake of letting her draw me in in the past). I totally think (or at least hope!) that its just a developmental phase, and you know... this too shall pass. :p

Erin said...

Renee's right. If it gets out of hand, keep a journal with it--or a chart of some kind. I know it sounds strange, but I did this once in a classroom where a preschooler got really out of hand with this stuff. If it was a "we'll see" because it was way too early to be able to know the answer, we wrote down the wish on a paper, and then set a time frame for it. If it was conditional, we wrote those things out too. Somehow the visual reminder of that helped her realize the connections. It takes work to design the right kind of chart/journal/record keeping for what types of situations you're encountering, but being able to have a visual effect works. For example--if she wants to do something and she has to earn it through good behavior--a reward chart. That's ultra simple for a complex problem, but you can apply that to so many different things. Good luck!