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Maryland Babies
KathrynMD
member
DD crying Whenever I correct her?
KathrynMD
member
DD has started crying frequently whenever I try to correct her/make suggestions. I'm not angry, I'm not yelling - I'm just telling her some better decsions for her - i.e. "Ella, can you put your cup down over here?" or even "I'm over here" or she'll drop a toy and cry - and then I'll say "you can pick it up" and she'll pick it up and stop crying. WTF? Its almost like she's embarrassed to have behaved "wrong" but there's nothing wrong about her behavior - its not like she's sticking her hand in the outlets or the stove or something. And, the few things that are definite "no's" in our house - no touching the stove, no pulling on cords/plugs, she knows and repeats all the time w/o crying so those don't seem like a big deal. And, I am stern when I have to tell her no to those things.
Is this whining? Should I just ignore her when she cries about this stuff?
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Re: DD crying Whenever I correct her?
I just read a really interesting article in the NYT health section about anxiety and depression in young children. It was long but fascinating. My take away was that when a child gets upset often parents want to make things better as quickly as possible, but that doesn't actually help the child. Often the cry or have an angry outburst because they don't know how to properly deal with their emotions. According to the article the best thing to do is to engage the child. Ask them why they are upset, help them express how they feel and then talk to them about it.
The example in the article was a little boy that broke a cup. He hid under the table, when his mom asked him what was wrong he said, "I broke the cup. I am a bad boy." So the mom explained that yes, he broke the cup, but he didn't MEAN to break the cup and he certainly ISN'T a bad boy.
Anyway, I obviously have no personal expericence with this stuff yet, so take what I said with a grain of salt! I'll see if I can find the article...
honestly,I think it's normal. DD did it for a while, and sometimes still does with DH. Sometimes I think she is sensitive to the tone, and sometimes she is just frustrated and can't think of the words fast enough. And sometimes she is in the process of figuring out the consequences herself because she is curious and I interrupted her thought process.
Also, if it's just something minor, like not a rule, I just let it go and let my daughter learn from her own mistakes, because I think she wants to. She wants to learn how the world works and why she can't do something. If she puts a cup on the floor and I know she will knock it over and spill it, I let her do it, because she has to clean it up, and she has learned not to put the cup on the floor. If she leaves toys out and she steps on the and hurts her foot, then she cleans up her toys. I want to protect her, but I also want her to learn why we don't do certain things and some kids learn better by mistakes.