M3 is reaching this age where girls are starting to be manipulative and mean (OMG...already!!!). It's hard for me to bite my tongue when she has a friend over and one of them does the "I don't want to play that" routine, causing the other to break down into a blubbering mass. Or when they fixate so stubbornly on an imagined slight (Real life example: "You stepped on that bug." "No, I stepped NEXT to it." "No, you stepped ON it." "No, I didn't!!" "Yes, you did!!") that one or both of them is reduced to a blubbering mass. (My less-than-exemplary reaction, turned up to 11: "It doesn't matter AT ALL!! SO DROP IT!!" Nice, huh?)
Anyway, the other night M3 told me a best friend (I'll call her R) called something M3 said "stupid." M3 didn't argue because she didn't want R not to want to play with her anymore. (Mommy, why are your ears steaming?) My advice for this and other situations has been to just ignore it and try to make your own fun. (And of course, to believe in yourself enough to know that what you said was NOT stupid. Can I throttle R now??!!) When your friends can't make you angry, they lose that power over you. Well, this is a hard concept for an 8-year-old to grasp, let alone execute.
But yesterday she did it!! And saw for herself how well it worked. She said to me, "R wouldn't listen to me, so I just looked out the window and started singing Pop Fly. And it was just, like, 30 seconds later that she asked me if I wanted to play Concentration!!" I wanted to dance with joy!! I was so proud that she actually kept her cool and tried this tactic. I'm just hoping that this real-life success will convince her to try it again in the future. Cuz I know things are just gonna get worse! We haven't even hit middle school yet! Guess I'm gonna have to read Queen Bees and Wannabes sooner than I thought.
Meanwhile, M4 just wants me to watch how fast he can get into and out of his "fire suit." (It's Fire Prevention week. Check your smoke alarm.)
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