I Never Thought That I Would...

This parenting thing is hard, isn't it? Before I actually had kids it was so easy to plan things out, how to be the perfect parent. It was so easy to think that I would never use the the TV as a babysitter - until I was pregnant, exhausted and nauseated with 2 young kids to look after and in desperate need of a couple of hours of peace and quiet. It was so easy to think that I would never be one of those mums who cook 2-3 different meals for dinner because the kids don't like XYZ... until we ended up with allergies, intolerances and sensory issues. I never thought that I would end up with kids who would be diagnosed with half the alphabet (I grew up with a lot of the people around me believing that kids who act out just need discipline). Now acronyms like ASD, PDD-NOS, AS, ADHD, and SPD are just a part of life.

I never thought that we would pull the car over and I would haul a misbehaving child out into the drizzle and tell him he was welcome to walk the rest of the way home if he wanted. And yet, that's what ended up happening today. We were heading out of town, on the 35-ish minute drive home, when the older 2 boys started throwing a tantrum because they wanted to go to Macca's. Our answer, as it most often is, was no. We can't afford it right now plus Macca's is only a sometimes thing, not every day, week or even month. Shmoo went beyond tantrum and into a full-blown meltdown, thrashing about, yelling, kicking etc. He had to be warned to leave his seatbelt on properly.

And then he started screaming at us, repeatedly telling us to shut up and that he thought things would be better if we went away. He was screaming at us to go away right now, telling us that he didn't want us near him. We pointed out that we couldn't actually go anywhere right there and then and that if he didn't want to be near us then he was going to have to be the one to go. He was not a happy 7yo.

And that's when we pulled over (very quiet country road) and I got him out of the car. I shut the rear car door and then went to get back into the passenger seat. It snapped him out of his meltdown. He quickly wrenched the door open again and scrambled back into the car. He was still rude, aggressive and argumentative but at least he wasn't in meltdown mode.

Exhausting. For all of us.