Vacation

The rest of our multi-grandparent trip unfolded very nicely. The first day at Hershey Park reminded me that we need to work out certain agreements beforehand - regarding snacks, treats, money, etc. I found myself feeling put upon by too many requests, and heard myself saying no and lecturing about why. So the next day, we set out all the expectations before we left the hotel room: adults will buy meals and drinks, children each get a daily chunk of cash to use for treats, games, souveniers, etc. They can use their own money in addition. On the day we went to the chocolate factory, they could eat whatever they wanted (either free or purchased by themselves) while we were there, then no more sweets for the rest of the day. This all worked out perfectly. After Toby had spent all his daily money plus some of his allowance on a big bag of chocolate, we were at the amusement park and he wanted to play a game. "Oh, too bad you don't have any money left," I say. "Yeah," says he. At Sesame Place, Hazel spent about 20 minutes in the gift shop, picking up rogressively smaller Elmos until she found one about 3 inches tall that she could afford. She carried him around for a while until she found some Silly Bands. She didn't have enough money for both, put Elmo back, bought the Silly Bands, and was completely content. ZERO begging, whining, or crying, from either of them. Amazing.

My dad got into some trouble when he fronted Toby money to play a game, which Toby said he would pay back at the hotel. It was one of those "Everyone's a Winner" games, so Toby got a stuffed plush pig - and of course Hazel wanted a pig too. My father did not want to lend Hazel the money for the game because he knew that she didn't have any in the hotel room to pay him back. I told him he had to - his knowledge about Toby's money in the room was too complex for Hazel to understand why she was getting different treatment. Then they had identical pigs - Toby solved that by taking the tag off his.

Advance planning and involving the kids in forming the agreements will now be a permanent part of my temptation-management arsenal!

Since then, we were home for a few days and now are visiting friends in another part of the country. Contributions have pretty much evaporated, we are following the structure of this household. One struggle right now is holding the kids to certain routines from home - fulfilling the Rs for dessert, screentime, etc. Very basic - brush your teeth and pick up the Legos before you plop in front of the TV for an hour. The hardest part is that things we consider privileges are, here, neither earned nor limited. I am being as flexible as I can bear, but we already had a week of more sweets than usual - I don't want this to be the new daily expectation. This is even a struggle with my husband - his flexibility for vacation takes the form of utter inconsistency - you have to drink water between cups of juice but here's a chocolate bar at 10 a.m. Of course I don't expect other families to change their routines for us, but some people intuitively compromise to help all parties stay closer to their principles - and others don't. I was actually teased this morning for giving our friend's kids Life cereal for breakfast, which they accepted and ate contentedly - instead of Reese's chocolate peanut-butter cereal. The adults are harder to deal with than the kids.

That said, I have found myself physically removing my children from the house several times, to cry or scream outside where it will be less bothersome to other people. Putting them outdoors makes them scream even more, at the humiliation of being overpowered. Under the circumstances, I do think this is the best compromise - the children know that screaming in the house bothers people and that I won't allow it in other people's homes, the expectation is clear. Dan is really struggling with Hazel's resistance to getting her teeth brushed or diaper changed - pretty much every time he is responsible for either of these tasks, he ends up physically overpowering her - with all the emotional consequences that entails. I have tried offering alternative strategies that work for me, as well as empathy and the assurance that I have these interactions with her also. I have to resign myself to the fact that he shapes his own relationship with them and I can't control it. Have to go now, the crowd is on the move - I'm sure there's more to come.