We live overseas and it's very costly to buy English Easter eggs. We splashed out and got all 5 of us a decent sized egg. We also bought 4 regular-sized creme eggs.
Each child had their own large egg and wolfed it down. When I went to get the creme eggs down (from a high shelf) they had all been eaten, despite me expressly telling my daughter (age 8) the day before that she couldn't have them. DD told me she'd eaten them all. Today when I came home from work, mine and my husbands large eggs had been completely eaten. By DD. Again - despite making it very clear that they were not to be. FWIW all the children received massive baskets of candy from relatives.
This is not in isolation - we are having lots of issues with DD being disrespectful and having no respect for other people's things. She has always been a child who pushes boundaries and I find her a real challenge at the best of times.
I emptied her piggy bank and told her that I would be using the money to replace the eggs. She has had an enormous meltdown and DH - as per usual - has rushed to her side, therefore showing her that she can basically do whatever she likes and Daddy will support her.
I know I'm going to get a lot of "you don't have a DD problem, you have a DH problem" responses (with good reason, I suspect) but my question is - was the punishment unreasonable? I really don't think it is, and there's no point even discussing it with DH.
AIBU?
To have made DD pay for the eggs she ate?
sailawaywithme · 29/03/2016 02:43
Oh, I didn't mean for the OP to go back and present options now that punishment has already been meted out - just that's what I would have done in the circs. Having said that, there's no losing face by discussing it and saying "if you consider what I did unfair compared to your actions, what do you think would be fair?". Whilst Egg-gate might be over in deed, it's not over if both the OP and her DD are simmering over it.
Both my DC do tend to lose it; we've been discussing courses of action with DC2’s nursery for a year. This 'deciding for yourself the best way of righting a wrong' is the closest we've come to calming down some of his excessive behaviours. He's very intelligent and knows that bad behaviour as well as good gets rewarded with attention; what we're trying to do is teach him a) empathy so that he understands that good behaviour is so much nicer for everyone else and more rewarding for him in the long-term, and b) take away the attention for the bad behaviour. Sitting down and discussing it calmly in the same way that we might say 'would you like to colour in the dinosaur or the train?' or 'shall we go to the park or the swimming pool today?' neutralises the actions and simply leaves him with a problem to solve. He loves maths, number problems, word searches and logic puzzles, so we try to present his behaviour back to him in terms he understands and appreciates, removing the emotion except as 'a consequence' to be taken into account as part of the puzzle.
I don't think we're perfect by a very long way, this is not a natural way for me to react (I do have to take a deep breath otherwise I'd probably blow my top several times a day 
). However, at the moment this is the most workable solution we've found, and it gives him back a bit of what he wants and most fears not having, the loss of which has generally caused the situation in the first place: control. And I get that.
It's bloody hard being a child in a world where adults make up the rules. As my DS said to me when he was 2 and I told him "because I'm your mummy", "who made you Mummy anyway? I did not choose you!" - I try to keep remembering that, difficult as it is.
Sounds like you are doing your very best, but it all sounds exhausting, sailaway. Sending you 
and 
. HFA was something that def occurred to me too, minimover. Reading OP's account of family life I see v similar differences between my DSS 1&2. My DS1 was finally diagnosed with Aspergers aged 12, which made a huge difference to us all. At last he understood himself - really helped his self-esteem. Of course it's not the whole story to a child's behaviour, but it helped us all to understand where he is coming from.
Re. DH, totally agree on need for a united front. We had problems for years with good cop/ bad cop scenario. Eventually I sat DH husband down and addressed the issue. It really helped diffuse the rigid roles we had both got stuck in. (I didn't 'get' DS1 before his diagnosis, and was sometimes over-critical, so DH would over-compensate in his defence, which I now understand.) DH is much more supportive now, and with that backing I'm able to relax more and not be stuck being bad cop! Have to say our ability to talk over issues like that started with going to marriage counselling together 10 years ago. Best thing we ever did.
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