Crying is like nails on a chalkboard for me, and every morning I am woken up by my girls because they are crying over something. They are 6. This morning it was demanding iPads and crying when my husband said no, the other day, it was both of them fighting over a shirt, another morning it was them fighting over a ring. This puts me in a bad mood for the day because I’m waking up and my body immediately feels stressed because of the crying. How do I get them to stop being so sensitive to all these little things in the morning? I should mention that my husband takes care of them in the morning while I’m still sleeping because they wake up at 6:30 and I don’t usually wake up until 7:30 but the crying has been waking me up earlier which is another reason I’m feeling immediate stress in the morning.
Rachel’s response:
Ack! What a way to wake up! No fun.
Are they crying like this all day, or just in the morning?
Member response:
It used to be all day until I implemented the individual special time. The rest of the day there’s crying over doing schoolwork, but I came up with a schedule and tell them that if they don’t spend the morning doing schoolwork it spills into their free time and that seems to motivate them. I also put the sister special time at the very end of the day so that they actually want to be together after all day being separated. So now we have issues mainly in the morning with the fighting over technology or material things and then in the evening trying to do their bedtime routine.
Rachel’s response:
You are making so much progress! Good for you. That just goes to show that when you give them what they need, behavior changes.
So then the next step is to figure out what it is about mornings. Is it that they’re tired in the mornings? Or is it related to not having something to do (which will lead to fighting because a.) it creates stimulation and b.) they’ll be jealous if the other found something to do but they didn’t)? Or something else?