On Thursday night MOlly stood up on the kitchen chair (expressly without permission!). As she "baaa-ed" at our dog Coop (this is a sound we were taught to make at him when we'd really rather make the sound "NO" but because I make the sound "NO" to my children so much-too much-we needed a new noise so as not to confuse the dog when he needed to know he was doing something that caused his owner to mean "NO") she fell backward, and I thought that I had for certain heard the chair crack into bits. I yelled "NO" at Molly (and a few other things, like "are you o.k.?"; but I was yelling so the compassion couldn't come through...and like "we don't stand on chairs! how many times must I tell you dear child? only again, I was yelling so it just sounded like "I'm mad at you kid" instead of constructive teaching).
Turns out the cracking sound was Molly's canine tooth.
Ouch.
So we had our first dental emergency. We called our dentist. she knew the tooth had to go. We made the appointment first thing Friday morning. With all the kids out of school we trudged Molly to the dentist for "happy air" (which terrifies me by the way) and the dentist's not so gentle yank of Molly's tooth. Gap. Blood. Faint little smiles from my brave little girl. Dentist reported that she was awesome.
She could not suck from a straw or eat real food for the day, and off to lunch we went.
Molly ate, again with faint smile and two separate spoons a lovely chocolate milk shake.
Lesson for Molly? Don't stand on chairs, stools, tables or counters cause this could happen again. Lesson for Mom? Don't yell. It rarely makes things better and most of the time it just makes things so much worse. Molly's tooth would still have been cracked if my reaction had been softer, but I would have felt like uber super mom instead of stupid mean mom if I had sent compassion instead of anger in her fall.
compassion instead of anger when they fall. Pretty good lesson for me huh?
5 comments:
A good lesson we both learned on almost the same day. I had the "why can't you walk" reaction with Hunter. Sounds like we needed to both be taught, to bad our little ones were the ones who had to suffer the dentist chair.
Holly cow! Give her a big hug from me. Incidentally, Alex lost his tooth - in the proper way - this last weekend as well!
oh man. I hear you on all fronts. I SAY that I am an advocate of letting them learn through trial, but I would rather they just listen! where is the lesson on getting them to just trust your judgment? but the yelling doesn't help and I am trying to eliminate it as well, bad habits die hard. (but die habit, please die!) glad she survived with only a broken tooth that will eventually regrow and not fifteen stitches in the head. and glad brandma was there to be helpful.
who's brandma? duh!
What have Josh and I learned in these past 6 days about yelling at children? All it does is produce tears NOT results! But keeping your cool when they are being frustrating is SO hard!
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