Parenting FAIL

The Little Miss is very strong-willed and very good at testing boundaries. Her newest trick is to get in our faces and scream "Ahhh!" when she disagrees with something we say or do. I used to tell her no but that only caused it to happen more so I now ignore. She says her peace and moves on.

Finding a day-to-day balance of working from home and spending time with The Little Miss is so difficult. We know in a few short months she's likely going to be in preschool four days a week in order to receive speech therapy through our school district. I want to savor as much time with her as I can, letting her blossom and learn with us. But the reality is, it's HARD. There are days I am swamped with urgent issues or trying to wrap up a deadline and Y is equally busy working on two major projects simultaneously (he's awaiting transfer to just one but in the meantime it's double workload for him).

That brings about today. We've had some plumbing issues since the recent freezing weather. Today was a continuation of repair people in the house so as we were preparing for their arrival, The Little Miss wanted to watch a video. She picked out Snow White but once it was in she decided she didn't like it. Her Dad went to the video shelf to pick out a DVD that might be more interesting for her. She got upset and starts screaming, "No! No! No!" and throws a DVD case at him. He calmly grabs a hold of her so she's looking at him and tells her "We don't throw things at people. That hurt Daddy." This is immediately met with hysterical sobbing. I give her a minute to calm down and when I see she's not I take her to her room and tell her that we are going to rest until she can calm down. She eventually stops crying and her breathing returns to normal. I decide to have a chat with her about how it's not nice to hurt people or throw things at people. I asked her what she did to her Daddy and she tells me (using some words and gesturing) that she threw the DVD at Daddy. I asked her if that was nice and she responded with "No.". I then told her Daddy was sad that she had hurt him and said she needed to say sorry (either with words or by sign language) and give him and hug. She immediately told me no and started crying again. So I held her on my lap letting her know she couldn't play until she said sorry or gave Daddy a hug. This continued for a good 45 minutes. I would let her sit on my lap but anytime I asked if she was ready to say sorry or give Daddy a hug it would be met with refusal and/or tears.

By the end I was in tears from complete frustration and feeling like complete poo for letting my child cry (not continuously mind you) so that her eyes were puffy and face splotchy. But this was one time I just couldn't let her actions slide. She may have been upset and frustrated that she couldn't communicate (her speech issues have caused some major frustration at times) but that doesn't excuse hurting someone by throwing something at them. In the end, she decided she'd go hug her Dad and ended up signing "sorry". She was fine the rest of the day but I wasn't. I can't shake the feeling that I FAILED. Was I being too stubborn? Was there a way to handle her outburst differently? Maybe, maybe not. Parenting is one long, continous lesson and there are times we fail and times we succeed. Unfortunately, I think today was a big fat FAIL.