Battle Of The Wills

I spent my morning coaxing Malena to take her cough syrup. She said that she would take her tablespoon of syrup without any problems, so I poured the measuring cup onto the spoon, as in the past, and place it near her mouth. SPLAT! It went over me and the floor. The previous warning about the step (our naughty corner) obviously did not matter to her. I said as calmly as I could, "Go to the..." She was already half-way there. She knew the consequence and was willing to take it. I thought that this would be a short lived battle because the rest of us were in the kitchen doing school and she was missing out. Wrong!

I went back every three or five minutes for one hour and fifteen minutes and the same reply came out of her sweet mouth. She kept her tears to herself when she thought I was not listening, but to my face she merely stated that it did not matter if she would miss out on the rest of the day's events.

I searched the 'wisdom' of the Internet, and found a whole lot of bribing, spiking food, and force as appropriate methods to giving unwanted medicine. At one hour and sixteen minutes, I told Malena what was going to happen. I would walk into the playroom and turn on Word World and walk away. She would then take her medicine all by herself and let me know when she finished. It worked! She was happy and I was happy.

At that moment that I realized Malena, as the middle child, doesn't get to do things just for her, just by her. She is constantly having to mold into what others around are asking (Sometimes yelling) at her to do, and what others want to do to her. This was just beginning of this independence struggle. We have already moved on to the battle of bath time. That is what I will take care of right after I publish this.