The Pulley of Twins

Let me weave for you the story of my morning:


The twins wake up. Dulce wakes Natalina up, which means Dulce starts out in the good mood, Natalina the bad.

Knowing that a calm, helpful mood earns happy parents, Dulce capitalizes on this. She eats her breakfast without complaint, gives me hugs, and is generally chipper and easy going. Natalina cries about wanting to go back to bed (which is an option she could have taken), cries about eating breakfast, calls us all mean, and is generally ornery.

This goes on for an hour.

Then, Dulce finds a little plastic puppy she'd painted yesterday. The paint had somehow gotten messed up. She freaks out, throws herself on the ground (by the way, these instances are a lot rarer these days. Most of the time, my kids are actually human beings at this point. It's glorious.) Anyway, I send her to her room to calm down, where she continues to be inconsolable. I turn to Lilly.

Who has miraculously transformed from cranky, pissed-off child to happy-go-lucky, compliant girl. She even offers to take the mistake dog instead of Dulce and attempt to repaint it. (Unheard of). She cheerily got dressed and made her bed. Because Dulce was crying.

And when something happens and Natalina starts tantruming, the pulley will shift again.

In this way, I perpetually have one "good" kid, and one "bad" kid.

Which is better on the face of it than two tantruming kids, but underneath, not so much. It speaks to a larger issue with my twins. Their perpetual, frustrating, maddening competition with each other.

Every single thing they do is only to outshine the other. Every single thing that happens is an accolade for one and a slight for the other. They spend nearly all their mental energy thinking about their twin and whether she is in a better position than the first.

And there are no positions in our house. My husband and I make it clear we don't care about the she-said/she-said crap. We don't favor anyone or anything. We have no idea why it is like this. We work to fix it by repeating that they are different girls and that it is not a competition. To limited success.

Twins. I just don't know about them.

Kindergarten Kids - Night Terrors

Problem:

Out of nowhere, your child is "waking up" at night screaming and talking gibberish. She's clearly scared and distressed, but there's nothing you can do. You go to her, hold her, bring her into another room, rock her, talk to her, smooth her hair, try to comfort her. Her eyes are open but she can't see you. She stares past you, through you, seeing things that aren't there. Obviously horrific, terrifying things. And she's calling for you, she needs you, but you're right there! Nothing you can do will shake her out of it. She'll go on and on, then out of nowhere, appear to "drop back to sleep". As you return her to her room, sometimes she'll wake up, and ask you why she's not in bed. She remembers nothing.

One of my daughters just started having night terrors. She's had three in about a week and a half. First time in her life. I'm at a loss.

Solution:

I have been told by multiple sources including friends, family, social media, and even academic studies, that there is nothing you can do. You just have to wait them out. Apparently, children grow out of them. I'm slightly concerned because in my opinion, five and a half is late to develop these terrors. I was under the impression they started most often at two and three, and wrapped up around now. So there's that.

I can't really sit around waiting it out, so we're trying various things. I feel certain (as many people have suggested) that it has to do with over-tiredness. The girls have stopped napping entirely in the afternoon, and I know better than anyone that they are tired. They go to bed around 9 p.m. and get up at 6:30 a.m. each morning. It's like this because of my husband's work schedule. He doesn't get home until 8 p.m. most nights. The schedule was working fine when they napped after school, but without that extra hour-two hours, the girls are struggling. So, we're trying to adapt down to an earlier schedule.

I thought it was perhaps a recently started allergy medicine, Zyrtec. I stopped it. But three days after stopping it, she had her third terror. So, it's most likely not that (although I haven't started it again, just in case.)

It could also be sugar. The day of the third terror, she'd consumed more sugar than an army of kids should consume. It was her half-birthday (we celebrate those), so she had had cake, cotton candy, regular candy, and root beer. Damn. So, we're trying to cut down on the candy, too, but of course, it was just Valentine's Day, so there's going to be a lot of "no" and a lot of tantruming in this house forthcoming.

Somebody mentioned red dyes. We don't have too much of that, I don't think.

Anyway, if I ever figure it out, I'll let you know. But for now, it looks like I'll have to sit by absolutely helpless for 10 minutes or so every so often while my daughter screams in terror, unable to comfort her.

The only relief is that the kids going through this don't remember it happening.



 

Preschool Pointers - 20: How to Win an Argument with a Child

Problem:

Your kid is defiant. She will contest everything you say, and with gusto. She won't do what you ask, she tries to order you around, and you don't even know where this is coming from, since it's not like that ever works.

Solution:

While a lot of the time, I take this seriously enough, tell them that hurtful words can hurt even grown ups, or ask them to tell me nicely because I won't be ordered around, sometimes, I just can't with any of it.

Sometimes, it's better just to make a joke.

How? Well, last night my kid kept telling me to stop (this was after some order I didn't follow, and in attempt to stop me from explaining whatever it was I was explaining.) "Sop!" she said. "Sop, mom!"

"You sop!" I said.

"Sop!" she answered.

"Sop it!" I said with a grin.

"Mo-om, so-oooooop," she replied.

"Soooo-ooooo-ooooop," I said.

And so on until she was giggling, and we could go to bed friends.

I'm all for standing my ground and making a big hairy scene so that the girls know I'm in charge, but sometimes I just want to go to bed friends. There's no need to yell and force dominance all the time. Especially when, really, all of this parenting nonsense is so silly.

Petulant Dulce is not impressed.