[blparent] Help

[Leanne Merren]

Hi Jennifer,
May I ask how long your boyfriend has been in the picture?  Is this fairly new to your daughter, or has he been around for a while?
In my experience, my kids, especially my oldest, will act out whenever a situation is displeasing to them.  For instance, my husband travels a lot, and every time he leaves I have to be ready to endure at least a few days of disobedience and misbehavior from my son.  If I constantly punish him, he gets worse and blames me for why he hates for my husband to be gone.  It's a vicious cycle.  So I sat down and had a talk with him, explaining that I understand he gets upset when Daddy leaves, but that it isn't an excuse to misbehave.  I asked him if he can be more responsible when Daddy is gone, and be a big help to me so that he and I can get along and things can be easier on both of us.  That seemed to work pretty well.  I acknowledged his feelings, and put more control in his hands.  Is there a way you could apply this to your own situation?  Maybe tell your daughter that she hurts your boyfriends, and your feelings with her behavior, and that you are depending on her to be a big girl when you are gone?  You know her best so maybe think about how you can relate to her feelings and express your own.  Just an idea.  Incidentally, my son is extremely sneaky, and he has always taken advantage of our blindness, but I keep telling him that it's the eyes in the back of my head that matter, and I know what he's up to.  He has slowed down on the sneaky behavior since he's been punished for trying to deceive us so much.  It has been a good lesson about trust.  He is just a control freak by nature, so the more control we give him, without letting him walk all over us, the happier he is and the more he behaves.  Boosting his ego and praising him for what he does to help makes a tremendous difference.
Hope some of this helps.
Leanne
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jennifer Massey 
  To: blparent at nfbnet.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 12:52 AM
  Subject: [blparent] Help


  My boyfriend has no vision but my children do. He watches them 2 or 3 days a week sometimes for more then 8 hours a day.  My daughter who will be 6 soon told him today that she does the things that she does that are bad because he can't see her do them.  This hurt him very much.  We are not sure what to do at this point and any advice would be helpful.  I have tried spending extra time with her when I can and giving her some positive attention.  This week we have swimming which we always do together not only has a family but we each take some individual time with both of the kids, we also are taking both the kids to a carnival on friday and we are all going to the zoo on saturday.  We really try to spend as much time as we can with them in the positive and not sure why my daughter is lashing out so much towards him in general.  When I am at home she doesn't do this and when she is with her dad and his wife she doesn't do it either.  Just with him.

  Jennifer and Dustin
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