Edit: Thanks for the advice. I didn’t want to describe the exact situation because I was hoping for more general advice. Listing the age probably would have helped, though. To preface this, I don’t have kids

I was left with my 2-year-old niece this afternoon. My sister was working, and my brother-in-law was taking my other niece (5) to a birthday party. Before he left, my brother-in-law put the 2-year-old down for a nap. He told me to wake her up in 2 hours. She woke up in about 20 minutes.

At the time, I was doing some electrical work with the entire house out, because fuck the person who labeled the breaker. So I’m knees deep in exposed wires when I hear someone screaming “daddy!” upstairs. I made things as… less unsafe… as I could and went to her room. After trying to console her for about 10 minutes, I decided to let her just cry it out. She never did.

I finished my work, running up and down the stairs several times (like you do when someone doesn’t label the fucking switches), and I went back in her room. She’s still screaming for her dad. I eventually got her to calm down by pulling up a nursery rhyme video, and getting her a snack.

So far as I’m concerned, “I did everything right”. I didn’t get upset, I tried to let her resolve her own issues, and ultimately, I was able to get her to calm down. (I said I didn’t get upset. I got very worried she’d walk out with all the wires out of the wall) Still wonder could I have done anything differently? Is this just a no win scenario? What would you have done?

Now the 5 year old I have different problems with. She likes to push buttons. The latest thing being her trying to jump on me when I’m on the couch. My sister has a pretty straightforward time out protocol, which, I’ve “abused” in the past. They usually give her 5 minutes, I gave her 15 with less warning than they give. (She hit her sister, wtf am I supposed to do…) Holy crap I’ve never seen a kid that upset! She appealed to my brother-in-law and got the sentence reduced to normal.

So now she does this thing where if I tell her not to do something, she’ll try to side step it to see what she actually can get away with. Do I straight shut that down? Do I let it go for a while? She tries to have these kinds of things arbitrated by my sister and brother-in-law. They don’t exactly take her side, but they don’t take mine either. They kind of let it alone, which empowers her.

My sister and brother-in-law are by no means roll-overs. They take discipline seriously and have fantastic communication with the kids about how both parties feel, why, and why the consequences are what they are. But I tend to be less tolerant of behavior I’ve already addressed and see as unacceptable. Thoughts?

  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
    2·
    4 hours ago

    New answer for the specific context:

    You did your best with the 2 year old. Toddlers are difficult because they just make noises and expect you to work out what’s wrong for them. Small snack and something to drink are always good starting points, followed by a distraction (like the nursery rhymes video) to get their attention off what was upsetting them.

    With the 5 year old, you escalated by increasing the punishment to 15 minutes, and now your brother-in-law pushed it back down she knows you can be overruled. Talk to your sister and her husband to make sure you’re both clear on what limits your comfortable with and what specific punishments to give for breaching them, in line with what they’d normally give, so you can both be sure you’re giving out punishments they feel are appropriate, so there’s no room for her to get you overruled - if she goes to her dad you should both be confident he will back you up. She’s of an age where she is going to test what rules and limitations really exist, so you need to make sure she’s not getting mixed messages about it. You’ll have an easier time distracting her with something interesting than telling her not to do stuff.