It was Christmas Eve, ds1 and his 3.9 yo cousin had dragged a chair up to the tree and stripped it of all the chocolates my mother had (against my advice) hung on it, then they lied about having done it. I was pssed off, both that they'd done it but especially that ds1 had lied when I asked them if they'd done it. ds1 has only recently started lying, and I know it's a normal phase, but I need him to learn that it is not acceptable. So I said to him that what he'd done was wrong and we would be taking a bedtime story away from him (he normally has 3, and just hates it if he loses a story - a weird but useful punishment!), and they (my mother, 2 sisters, one bil) all contradicted me in front of him and said I was being too harsh and it was Christmas, and he's jsut doing it because he's a boy. Which really hit a nerve - my sisters both have girls (though my oldest sister also had a boy - but openly admitted she was relieved she'd ahd a girl first), we're a girl family, and I've always got this kind of 'sympathy' that I've got boys, and they always get together and compare the girls to my boys in a kind of 'aren't girls better behaved/cuter/more loving' kind of way, which gets right up my nose. So I got really angry and told them that he is my son and they shouldn't question how I parent him. So then my sister said "look, he's really hard work, I don't know how you cope with it, I'm not sure I could" . I know she meant it in a 'chin up' fashion, but basically what she said is I may as well change his name to Damien and have done with it. But he is not* that bad. Yes he's 3, he's pushing boundaries, that's what 3 year olds do. And it was both him and his cousin stealing, not just him, he is not so much worse. If she would get out of his face for 5 minutes he probably wouldn't be quite as tetchy with her as he is! I just hate this 'poor you, you have a boy, and boys behave much worse than girls, and he's probably even worse because you're such a shit parent'. So I spent the reast of the time knowing they're judging his every move, and mine too... My family loves to label people. My middle sisters the mouthy one, my oldest sister's the square one, I was the 'difficult' one. And if you get labelled as difficult, you inevitably get the blame for everything, so in the end, why not jsut act like a shit anyway? And to see them attaching a label to a 3 year old is wrong beyond belief.
Plus 3 year olds don't get Christmas, if you say it's ok to lie and steal for 3 days of the year, how are they to know that come tomorrow it's suddenly not ok again? And I was fucking right on that one when, yesterday, they sneaked into the dining room and opened all the crackers, including ones my mum had hand made for the kids with (you guessed it) chocolate inside. So then she got really annoyed and tried telling them off. Er, hello, if they can steal chocolate one day "because it's Christmas" and not the next, what the hell do you expect?!
What a diatribe, sorry . I'm just really . dh thinks we should do Christmas by ourselves next year . Any words of wisdom gratefully received....