My Role in the Meltdowns

One of the things that I’ve found surprising about parenthood is how easy it is to find myself doing things that I know aren’t good ideas. In the last week or two, I’ve found myself on the receiving end of three different Eleanor meltdowns, and in each case it’s pretty clear that I was asking for it. What is strange is that when you’re in the moment, it’s hard to do the right thing.

Agnes already talked about how I turned off the Miffy video on the computer that Eleanor was watching, which made her get upset. I was also trying to keep her from pulling things off of the desk. In retrospect, I probably should have given her something from the desk to hold, let her know that we were going to turn off the video soon, let her watch the next segment, warn her before it was going to end, and then tell her that it’s time to turn it off before turning it off. Instead, I took several things out of her hands, and turned off the video. Screaming ensued.

Another time we had to wash Miranda and Eleanor’s hands. Miranda was first, and she climbed the step stool to wash her hands. We let her run her hands under the water for a minute or two and then I told her that it was Eleanor’s turn, gave her a towel, and said “good job”. Miranda dried her hands, handed it back to me, and stepped down to let Eleanor have her turn. Eleanor also washed her hands, and I said that it was time to turn off the water. She said “no”. I turned off the water, and handed her the towel and she pushed it away. She tried to reach for the faucet. I said “Eleanor–we’re all done washing hands”, and she again said “no”. I lifted her off the step stool and set her down. She tried climbing back up while I put the step stool away. I repeated that we’re all done, and carried her out of the bathroom. She tried to go back inside, so I carried her back out, closed the door, and locked it from the outside. She tried the door and got upset. I left her at the door and she cried and screamed until Agnes came over to distract her. It’s pretty clear that locking Eleanor out of the bathroom wasn’t the best option here.

The third instance came during a morning last week. After she wakes up in the morning, Eleanor has been reluctant to do anything but just sit there and watch Sesame Street. This means that she doesn’t want her diaper changed, and she doesn’t want to change out of her pajamas to get ready for daycare. On this particular day, Agnes and I both needed to get to work a half hour earlier than normal, and Eleanor was refusing to get changed. I ended up pinning her to the changing pad while taking off her pajama bottoms and diaper, wiping her, and then pinning again her to keep her from twisting as I tried to put a new diaper back on. Then there was more manhandling to get her out of her pajamas. At each step, Eleanor fought me. She kept her arms bent so I couldn’t get them out of the sleeves. Then she held onto the bottom of her shirt so I couldn’t pull it up over her head. While getting dressed, she kept pushing the shirt up as I pulled it on, and she kept on trying to take off the pants that I was pulling onto her legs. Twenty minutes later, she was dressed for school, but we had both worked up a sweat. Naturally, Eleanor was crying. My takeaway: manhandling is bad.

This morning she refused to get changed, so we gave her a cup of milk and let her get settled a while before asking her to get on the changing pad to get changed. It was much quieter.

As I said at the beginning, I could have told you that none of these ideas were good ones. Watching TV? Turn it off with no warning. Washing hands too long? Lock her out of the bathroom. Won’t get ready for school? Wrestle her to the ground and forcibly change her clothes. What was I thinking?