"She needed to be 'bitch slapped' but he didn't do it". I heard my spouse read this to my daughter before bed recently. Someone is apparently getting frustrated with our girl's choice of reading material. We've gone through this before when our girl was smaller. She would get stuck on one book until we all had it memorized. After a while we'd get bored and mess with her by changing things in the story. Half the fun was seeing if we'd get caught. "That's not what that said!" At least we knew she was paying attention.
This was all part of the "process" involved in getting her majesty to get ready for bed. Some nights are better than others, of course. The stories are probably my fault. I'm a book nerd from way back and when I had my daughter, that was just a cheap excuse to get more books. The downside of this is inventory management. I'm a regular at library book sales and I have a ball looking. It's one of the few times I will voluntarily shovel my butt out of bed early on a weekend.
The rest of the process can be attributed to standard kid operating procedure. Our girl is a professional staller. Can I have some water? I'm hungry! Is it a bath night? Things got a bit hairier at during second grade. Our girl's math grades were almost swirling the perimeter. We tried the computer math games, math dice and getting her 'help' with figuring out the cost of treats at the grocery store. Finally, her teacher suggested flash cards and our therapist helped out by suggesting they be neon. Somehow flashcards got added to the "process" mainly because I couldn't figure out how to get any cooperation earlier in the day.
I think the captive-audience-because-you're-upstairs helps. It was painful at first but it got a little better when she figured out that these weren't going away anytime soon. This harrassment continued all through the summer. What frustrated me was that I didn't figure out how to take the torture out the flashcards until almost September. Our therapist suggested that since our girl is more of a visual kid, I could just get her to find the answer to a math question in a pile of flashcards. When we went to the library one day and ran into one of her teachers, she gave me the second half of a great idea! We could have a race.
Built into our bedtime saga is now a math game. I spread out the answer cards and 'race' our girl to find the answers. She had so much fun beating mommy that she asked for more cards! I had to wonder if she was feeling well but I've learned to shut up and go with it (selectively, that is) for as long as it lasts. Despite the fact, that I'm a CPA, my seven year old wins the math race every time by a mile. She hasn't figured out why mommy is so slow. Sometimes I don't get it, either.
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