I'm thinking SD4's good behavior last Thursday was just to throw me off because yesterday was like the 7th layer of Hell. This child has NO respect. Now I know she's 4 and that there are things she is too young to understand yet and she's still learning etc...But holy Harry Potter, this child was acting like she has never been taught a darn thing! First of all DH was up late the night before so he had fallen asleep on the couch and that was when all hell broke loose. I went into the bathroom and when I came out, SD4 came darting out of OUR bedroom and into her room. What was she doing? Rummaging through the candy. (We keep it in our room so its less accessible to her.) We keep it in a dresser drawer that has nothing in it and that is higher than her head. Well, she found it and was digging through it. Oh did I let her have it. She knows she is NOT allowed in our bedroom at all. (Let me just say markers and my clothes were the start of this rule.) And she also KNOWS she is NOT allowed to have ANY sweets without asking. Of course she makes herself cry so DH wakes up and asks whats wrong. She tells him I told her she's fat!!! I just rolled my eyes and laughed, luckily DH is not a stupid man and once I told him what happened he sat her down and had a nice chat with her. So, DH falls asleep yet again about 20 minutes later. I was in doing some work on the computer (I'm working on a fiction novel)and I figured I should go check on her. All she was doing is watching a movie, no biggie right? WRONG. I walk in and she hides something in her lap. I ask what she has and of course the reply is 'nothing'. I pull her up off the floor and what do I find? The stamp she got from McD's that I had set ontop of the TV (and had told her she couldn't have it due to the past issues with the stamps; using it on clothing, walls, etc)). The little bugger had climbed on the entertainment center and gotten it for herself! And if that wasn't it she had been using it on THE CARPET. So I am scrubbing purple ink out of the carpet, again. DH never wakes up during my yell fest. After the mess is cleaned up and the stamp has been thrown into the dumpster outside I went back in to work on my book. She was 'good' during this time and so I figured it'd be safe to just go to the bathroom real quick. Yeah right. I come out of the bathroom and can hear noises in the computer room, so I tiptoed back and caught the snot playing with DH's brand new $2000 computer and climbing on the desk. Oooohhh I'd had it, I came in and she jumps down almost knocking OJ all over the keyboard and knocking the screen so it rocked and almost fell. At this point I was FURIOUS. I hauled her little ass out of the computer room and in to DH and yelled at him 'YOU ALMOST DIDN'T HAVE A COMPUTER!'. He was dumbfounded and had no idea what was going on. What does SD do? Starts to cry and tells DH I told her she was too stupid to use a computer. :jawdrop: Are you serious? I yet again had to explain to DH what I found the Demonchild doing. He sat her down and had ANOTHER talk with her. Ok this child KNOWS she is not to be in our bedroom, not to have candy, not to have stamps and NOT TO BE AROUND THE COMPUTERS. Once DH is done talking to her she gets a timeout, 5 minutes instead of 4 because of her attitude. She yells and screams the WHOLE TIME. So she gets another 2 minutes. At this point I am hoping time will skip ahead an hour so she goes HOME. But the departure wasn't any better. SD comes out with her coat and shoes on and holding her play purse and wants to know if she can take it home, I told her no. (BM sells everything that SD takes home from our place, how do we know? we saw her garage sale...) DH is in the bathroom and she is not satisfied with my answer so she walks right into the bathroom to ask DH. Yet again I haul her ass into the living room and talk to her for the upteenth time about not walking in on people in the bathroom. This is literally the 450 millionth time we've had this conversation. I told her she is NOT taking her purse or the toys in it home and that she is NOT going to have them when she comes back, she will have to earn it back. She starts crying again and calls me mean and asks DH why he got married to me...Oh I flew off the handle. I told DH to get her out of our house NOW.
Now again I know she is 4 but this kid is REALLY pushing it. All these things she did yesterday had happened before and she knows the rules and consequences. I shouldn't yell at her the way I do but since DH doesn't want to spank, and we can only do so many time outs and she only has so many 'favorite' toys, I'm at a loss as to what else to do. I was also raised in a very strict home in which my parents used yelling as a way to get their point across, so I think the habit is learned too.
I told DH that if he won't discipline her then I will continue to do so MY WAY and that if he doesn't like it then he is going to have to step up. Whats he say? Well you can't yell at her all the time. Ohhhhh boyyy, was that the WRONG thing to say. I told him that when she is naughty I will discipline her and today she was VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY bad and what else was I supposed to do? Let it go? Not in my house Captain. I told him she is not to be unsupervised at any point in time and that if he cannot stay awake long enough to watch and care for HIS daughter than she doesn't need to come over and he can wait until he is awake enough. Of course he backed down and agreed, kissed me and apologized. What does he do next? Calls BM and tells her that SD was naughty and that she had lost some toys at our house and asked BM what she would like to do at her house so the discipline is continued between both homes. BM AGREES AND TAKES AWAY SDs TV!! Interhome discipline, never thought it would happen! So for all the crap the child pulled yesterday DH and BM helped put my mind at ease that SD isn't going to just go to BMs and have free range again until she comes back here.