the little tings
how do you make sure all of the kids get the equal attention?
there was an argument earlier this evening. I was showering the girls and I could hear Daddy Ting lecturing Oliver. I then stepped into the boys’ room to listen before adding in my 2 cents worth.
At that point, Ollie was..upset, borderline meltdown. Such meltdowns are rare. And chances are that he had been bottling it up, coupled with insufficient sleep and a bad sinus day, and he blew up everything. Quentin ruins everything, he makes a mess, I want my own room, that is my spot and he took my spot, so I will take a spot of his. Roar, roar, roar!
We managed to talk it out, he calmed down a lot more before bedtime and then they settled down for the night, whilst I put Alex to bed. We got hugs. Ollie still gave both Donald and I hugs, and I’m thankful for that. It meant that he had calmed down enough, a forgiving enough state. And it got me thinking a little, how we just close the door to the boys’ room and then put the girls to bed, and figured the boys will sort themselves out till they fall asleep.
I wondered if the boys felt left out, rather than ‘omg, we are on our own! Awesome!’ The attention given to Ollie is a lot lesser, expectations pile up, but lesser attention is given, well, becos they are more grown up. I came to realise that there are no more chats before bedtime as we recently decided that the boys were to go to bed on their own. I had been putting them to bed, sitting in their rooms until they fall asleep before leaving. Was it a too abrupt change? Did the novelty wear off?
I also realised that as I constantly babied Alex, I was leaving Sarah out. The middle child position now fell on Sarah as Oliver and Quentin bonded a lot more. Sarah was the third wheel to the boys, and the older sister to Alex, the sister who was getting into trouble for not giving in to the youngest. I had spent some time with Sarah earlier this morning, doing some colouring and she was like ‘you asked me to do this because colouring is my favourite activity right?’
I can’t really deal with her girly-ness. I’m not a girly person, but yet I also wondered if in my attempt to toughen her up, I was indirectly telling her girly-ness is not tolerated, that she had to ‘man-up’.
Gaah..why is parenting so complicated. Doesn’t help that it’s moments like these that make me feel like I’m..not doing a good enough job as a mother. Parenting is still very much a teamwork between Donald and I, and I am grateful for that. I’m gonna take it as ‘at least we figured it out earlier, we still have time to fix it.’