The Struggle
Whew, I’m tired y’all.
Y’all know that in addition to my baby boy (who will be 3 months old in a few days 🥰), that I also have a 9 year old daughter.
Normally she is the sweetest person alive. She is super overprotective of me, super funny, she loves to sing and dance, she’s beginning to express an interest in fashion design-just amazing really. However, recently she has been getting in trouble a lot for being sneaky/snarky.
Every single night I always make it a point to ask her if she needs to tell me anything or if she has anything she wants to talk about. I always tell her that she will never be in trouble for making a mistake, but she gets herself in trouble by being sneaky and lying about it.
I try not to subscribe to the typical Black way of handling things by spanking, but instead talk to her about what she’s done wrong and punish her by taking her things away. My brothers and I got spanked and I don’t want to do that to her. I tell her that all she has to do is come to me and I can help her with whatever it is.
Today y’all, I was getting ready to take her outside to ride her bike and I went in her room to see if she was ready. She jumped and tried to meet me at the door so I wouldn’t come all the way in. I looked down and saw dark blue paint all over the carpet…looked up and saw dark blue paint on the wall…looked at her mirror and saw paint…looked at a painting on her wall and yep-saw paint.
She had clearly tried to wipe it up and made it an ever bigger mess. I asked her what happened. She said she accidentally got paint everywhere because she had put paint in some sort of tube and was playing swords and it came out. I asked her why she didn’t tell me and of course she said she didn’t know. I asked her if she was going to tell me and she said yes (clearly a lie).
Now I know that that might not seem like a big deal, but she also got in trouble yesterday. Once again, I explained to her that if she came to me when it happened that she wouldn’t have gotten in trouble and I would have just helped her clean it up. She would never get in trouble for playing and making a mess, the problem comes when she lies and hides it. So I took her tablet.
I don’t know how to get her to understand. She’s way too young to be so sneaky y’all. I’m not sure if it’s the shows she’s watching (I already limited her access to TV-Y7, I may have to make her start watching literal kids shows like Sesame Street 😆), or the fact that she spends so much time around grown ups, but I’m struggling and scared of her keeping this sneakiness up.
I try to be a good mommy, she’s spoiled and literally gets everything she wants. She was the first grandchild after all. Sometimes I wonder if it’s my fault. I don’t want her to resent me for disciplining her, but I know that I can’t let her think what she does is okay because it’s not.
I also don’t have any friends with kids her age so I can’t go to someone for advice. My parents would probably say to spank her but we know that won’t ultimately fix the problem.
Then I think about therapy. Maybe she’s going through something she won’t speak to me about. I try to get her to open up more but she says she doesn’t have anything she needs to speak about…maybe counseling would help.
I just know that I love my daughter with every fiber of my being and I need her to do better now, so that when she’s older she won’t make any mistakes that will haunt her. I’ll do anything for that girl y’all-and have.
If you’re reading this and have any similar experiences, please let me know how you handled it. I’m trying.
