A troubling trend

Rachel is not the perfect child; she can get whiny and mopey when she doesn't get her way. Sometimes she even has a mild temper tantrum when one of her friends isn't home to play, or we won't let her do something she'd like to do.

Drew and I rarely yell at her and never spank her; we just speak sternly to her and tell her to knock it off. Or, we'll let her know that we're disappointed in her behavior. Her reaction is very interesting (and heartbreaking): usually she'll hug me fiercely and say, "I want MOMMY," and start to cry, and then she'll offer to do something dramatic, the worst thing she can think of to punish herself. Usually that involves throwing her favorite stuffed animals or her bathrobe in the garbage. Once in Portland she said she tried to hit and pinch herself as punishment (this was when Drew was in D.C. and I was trying to close out our life in Oregon and I flew off the handle at some tiny thing she did. I was so upset that she was trying to hurt herself that I took her into my lap, sobbed, and told her to promise me that she'd never, ever hurt herself again. She hasn't done that since).

Anyway, tonight she did something similar. She was upset at the end of "Angelina Ballerina" that there wasn't enough music on the movie for her and Drew to dance to (they usually dance at the end of all the episodes before she goes up to bed) and so she got whiny and said, "it's not FAIR!" Drew had to remind her that she'd had a very nice day and gotten her way on a lot of things, and that it didn't make sense for her to focus on the one thing she didn't get.

When it was time for her to say goodnight to me after her bath, she got all weepy, and said "I want MOMMY."

"What's the matter?" I asked her.

"I want MOMMY!" she insisted.

I hoisted her onto the counter and said gently, "are you upset at yourself that you made such a fuss after the movie?"

"YES!" she said, bursting into tears. "I told Daddy that we should stop celebrating my BIRTHDAY!"

I told her gently that I understood that she was upset she had acted that way and that she wanted to punish herself, but told her that instead of doing that, she should focus on how not to exhibit that behavior in the first place. "Can you try to remember that next time?" I asked her.

"Yess," she said. "I hope I don't cry on the way to school. I don't like crying in public. Everyone looks at you and it's embarrassing."

I told her a week or so ago, when she insisted on throwing her stuffed animals into the garbage to punish herself, that she shouldn't do that. I took her into my lap, looked into her eyes, and said, "Rachel, the world will punish you enough. Don't punish yourself, OK?" Evidently that didn't take.

Hopefully, our discussion tonight will.