Ten years ago I would see adverts on TV that portrayed a perfect family life. Whether it was an advert for something as family orientated as "Disneyworld" or an advert for something as ordinary as "Birds Eye Fish Fingers" they would always portray a perfect family life. Dad would always be some ridiculously good looking man with perfect hair and perfect teeth and Mam would always be better looking with even better hair and better teeth. Then the kids, of which there would always be two and usually one of each gender, were stupidly cute with perfect hair and perfect teeth. Their clothes were always clean and ironed and none of them had bags under their eyes and they were always just so happy. Whether they were queuing up for "The Haunted Mansion" or eating perfectly cooked fish fingers with chips and peas they always did it with such radiance and happiness. I used to watch these adverts and I would look forward to the day that I would live my life like those wonderful families in them. In my daydream I would be a good 8 inches taller, a few stone lighter, have amazing hair and teeth and I would be so rich that I could just take my perfectly beautiful family to "Disneyworld" whenever the hell I felt like it.
Fast forward 10 years and I am still short, I am fatter than I have ever been, my clothes are covered in stains, I don't know where the iron is, my bags under my eyes have their own bags, my teeth are not as white as I imagined and I am broke as fudge and living from payday to payday. I do, however, have awesome hair! Every cloud... I do also have a beautiful family. My wife is beautiful inside and out and she is an amazing mother to our twin girls, Ruby and Poppy, who are stupidly cute. They are my life and my everything and I would do anything for them. However - life as a family is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE THOSE BLOODY FISH FINGER ADVERTS!!!! I have discovered that having kids and having a family is basically two things:
1: Rewarding
2: Challenging
There is no perfect balance between these two. Sometimes I have a streak of 3 days where it is bliss and rewarding and other times I have a streak of 4 days where it is annoying and oh so challenging.
The past few weeks have been very challenging. The twins have decided that they don't like to do three things:
1: Go to bed
2: Listen
3: Do what they are told
It has really driven Kate and I insane to the point where we are losing the will to live. Bed time in particular when they think it is acceptable to go to bed at their usual time and still be bouncing around 90 minutes later and shouting at each other. We have tried many approaches:
A: Standing outside their room for anything from 10 minutes to an hour saying "shush" at every sound until they fall asleep.
B: Threatening to take away their favourite things which doesn't appear to bother them as we are currently in possession of "Squirrel" and "Hedgehog", their new "PJ Masks", "The Lion Guard" and "Zootropolis" toys that they got for their birthday.
C: We have banned TV - they have now had no TV for 5 days and, again, they don't seem bothered.
D: Losing our shit and shouting at them until it hurts our throats which they appear to find funny.
E: I've tried to take a "cooler" approach and teach them how to be sneaky and how to pretend to be asleep and how to whisper - apparently this is hard to grasp.
Add these bedtime shenanigans in with the fact that they don't listen to anything we say and that they don't do anything they are told and you can, hopefully, understand why Kate and I are at the end of our tethers. I keep trying to teach them that a massively important skill in life is acknowledging people when they talk to you. I have explained to them that if they are in the process of saving "Judy Hopps" from "Luna Girl" and I ask them to, say, wash their hands ready for dinner that I don't expect them to just drop what they are doing but that all they have to do is acknowledge me. They don't seem to get this. I also keep trying to teach them that if they do something the first time they are asked that it is less likely that when I ask them to "put your shoes on" for the sixteenth time that I won't ask them with a raised voice. They don't seem to get this either.
Kate and I have had many discussions about this over the past few weeks and we have come to the conclusion that a big part of this is because they are twins. If we had two kids of different ages they would probably go to bed at different times and possibly even in different rooms. But because they are both the same age and go to bed together in the same room they just bounce off each and wind each other up. The reason they don't listen or do what they are told is, we believe, just because they are 6 years old and in their world there are much more important things going on than what we want them to do. I know that it is selective hearing as I can ask them twenty times to "put your coat away" and not be acknowledged but if I mention the word "chocolate" they suddenly develop sonic hearing and are my best friend.
Today has been a challenging day. I was flying solo this morning as Kate went to work early. She got them ready for school and did their hair so all I had to do was give them their breakfast, get them to brush their teeth then put their coats and shoes on and go to school. I had 85 minutes to do all of this. More than enough time...what could possibly go wrong? We got back and breakfast was sorted without any issues and then I asked them to go and brush their teeth. This turned out to be an issue and resulted in them fighting with each other over "sink space". This resulted in me telling them to stop being daft. I checked my watch and we had a good half an hour before we had to leave for school so I told them they could play for twenty minutes. They kept going up to their room and bringing down more and more toys and at the end of the twenty minutes I asked them to take all of the toys back upstairs. They started doing this but then got distracted so I asked them again which resulted in Ruby having an almighty tantrum for absolutely no reason whatsoever. She thrashed about and shouted at me and screamed at me and cried and growled and just behaved like, if I am being honest, an utter moron! However...this was the straw that broke the camel's back and I did something I have never done before.........I cried! I cried and told my daughters that I had "had enough" and "could not cope with it anymore". I stomped off to the back door and I cried more then I took a few minutes to compose myself, got them to put their coats and shoes on and I took them to school. We didn't talk the whole way. I got back in the car and I called Kate at work and I told her what had happened and told her we needed to sort this out once and for all. She agreed.
Throughout the day we communicated via text and we decided to introduce a reward chart and some rules. It isn't the first time we have had to do this but it is the first time where we approached it in a different way and did something differently......we let them set the rules! I created the reward chart using a traffic light system and making it a bit like a board game. I let them design their own avatar to move around it and I created the "Aims" so that they could see what they had to do and what they could achieve. We then worked out the rules together as a family and I let them think about things they would like or that they would like to do and let them come up with the rewards. This is what we came up with...
It has now been in place for a few days but has been a bit hit and miss! Sometimes they get it and understand what they need to do but other times it just goes out of the window. Poppy has been as high as Number 4 but this morning when I left for work she was back down to Number 1. Time will tell if this will work...I shall update this at a future date! Hopefully with good results...
And on that note I will sign off
Until next time...
The Twiglet's Dad
Fast forward 10 years and I am still short, I am fatter than I have ever been, my clothes are covered in stains, I don't know where the iron is, my bags under my eyes have their own bags, my teeth are not as white as I imagined and I am broke as fudge and living from payday to payday. I do, however, have awesome hair! Every cloud... I do also have a beautiful family. My wife is beautiful inside and out and she is an amazing mother to our twin girls, Ruby and Poppy, who are stupidly cute. They are my life and my everything and I would do anything for them. However - life as a family is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE THOSE BLOODY FISH FINGER ADVERTS!!!! I have discovered that having kids and having a family is basically two things:
1: Rewarding
2: Challenging
There is no perfect balance between these two. Sometimes I have a streak of 3 days where it is bliss and rewarding and other times I have a streak of 4 days where it is annoying and oh so challenging.
The past few weeks have been very challenging. The twins have decided that they don't like to do three things:
1: Go to bed
2: Listen
3: Do what they are told
It has really driven Kate and I insane to the point where we are losing the will to live. Bed time in particular when they think it is acceptable to go to bed at their usual time and still be bouncing around 90 minutes later and shouting at each other. We have tried many approaches:
A: Standing outside their room for anything from 10 minutes to an hour saying "shush" at every sound until they fall asleep.
B: Threatening to take away their favourite things which doesn't appear to bother them as we are currently in possession of "Squirrel" and "Hedgehog", their new "PJ Masks", "The Lion Guard" and "Zootropolis" toys that they got for their birthday.
C: We have banned TV - they have now had no TV for 5 days and, again, they don't seem bothered.
D: Losing our shit and shouting at them until it hurts our throats which they appear to find funny.
E: I've tried to take a "cooler" approach and teach them how to be sneaky and how to pretend to be asleep and how to whisper - apparently this is hard to grasp.
Add these bedtime shenanigans in with the fact that they don't listen to anything we say and that they don't do anything they are told and you can, hopefully, understand why Kate and I are at the end of our tethers. I keep trying to teach them that a massively important skill in life is acknowledging people when they talk to you. I have explained to them that if they are in the process of saving "Judy Hopps" from "Luna Girl" and I ask them to, say, wash their hands ready for dinner that I don't expect them to just drop what they are doing but that all they have to do is acknowledge me. They don't seem to get this. I also keep trying to teach them that if they do something the first time they are asked that it is less likely that when I ask them to "put your shoes on" for the sixteenth time that I won't ask them with a raised voice. They don't seem to get this either.
Kate and I have had many discussions about this over the past few weeks and we have come to the conclusion that a big part of this is because they are twins. If we had two kids of different ages they would probably go to bed at different times and possibly even in different rooms. But because they are both the same age and go to bed together in the same room they just bounce off each and wind each other up. The reason they don't listen or do what they are told is, we believe, just because they are 6 years old and in their world there are much more important things going on than what we want them to do. I know that it is selective hearing as I can ask them twenty times to "put your coat away" and not be acknowledged but if I mention the word "chocolate" they suddenly develop sonic hearing and are my best friend.
Today has been a challenging day. I was flying solo this morning as Kate went to work early. She got them ready for school and did their hair so all I had to do was give them their breakfast, get them to brush their teeth then put their coats and shoes on and go to school. I had 85 minutes to do all of this. More than enough time...what could possibly go wrong? We got back and breakfast was sorted without any issues and then I asked them to go and brush their teeth. This turned out to be an issue and resulted in them fighting with each other over "sink space". This resulted in me telling them to stop being daft. I checked my watch and we had a good half an hour before we had to leave for school so I told them they could play for twenty minutes. They kept going up to their room and bringing down more and more toys and at the end of the twenty minutes I asked them to take all of the toys back upstairs. They started doing this but then got distracted so I asked them again which resulted in Ruby having an almighty tantrum for absolutely no reason whatsoever. She thrashed about and shouted at me and screamed at me and cried and growled and just behaved like, if I am being honest, an utter moron! However...this was the straw that broke the camel's back and I did something I have never done before.........I cried! I cried and told my daughters that I had "had enough" and "could not cope with it anymore". I stomped off to the back door and I cried more then I took a few minutes to compose myself, got them to put their coats and shoes on and I took them to school. We didn't talk the whole way. I got back in the car and I called Kate at work and I told her what had happened and told her we needed to sort this out once and for all. She agreed.
Throughout the day we communicated via text and we decided to introduce a reward chart and some rules. It isn't the first time we have had to do this but it is the first time where we approached it in a different way and did something differently......we let them set the rules! I created the reward chart using a traffic light system and making it a bit like a board game. I let them design their own avatar to move around it and I created the "Aims" so that they could see what they had to do and what they could achieve. We then worked out the rules together as a family and I let them think about things they would like or that they would like to do and let them come up with the rewards. This is what we came up with...
It has now been in place for a few days but has been a bit hit and miss! Sometimes they get it and understand what they need to do but other times it just goes out of the window. Poppy has been as high as Number 4 but this morning when I left for work she was back down to Number 1. Time will tell if this will work...I shall update this at a future date! Hopefully with good results...
And on that note I will sign off
Until next time...
The Twiglet's Dad
Comments
Post a Comment