Family and home advice

Reposted entirely without permission:

I’m not even certain where to start… but last night, the child had a tantrum around the time we were trying to sit down for dinner. Which is not unusual – he’s on the fringes of the behavior described in the Explosive Child, so I try to keep that in mind and work with him before things get out of control. Lately, I’ve been farily successful in that area. What started the blow-up was this: the child decided he wanted some ranch dressing in a bowl so he could dip his pasta wheels. I immediately pulled out a very small bowl and put some in for him and set it on the table with his plate. Meanwhile, he’s pulling a larger cereal bowl out of the cabinet; he had wanted that size bowl. DH comes in all bull-headed and won’t let him switch out bowls, which I was totally willing to do. They start butting heads and off it goes. Unfortunately scenarios like that are not too unusual either… DH and the child really set each other off. Sigh.

This was followed by several posts offering support but no real advice and lots of people saying they could have written that post. I offered some water down advice and general information but what I really wanted to say was "are you freaking kidding me? You let your husband rile your 2 year old into a tantrum about a bowl?" WTF!

Too many people expect people to do what they want without having to say it. If you want something you have to tell people that you want it. People in general but especially men are not mind readers! They can not know what you from them unless you tell them. Women who complain that someone missed their birthday, anniversary, special occasion but never reminded anyone get what they deserve. DH never forgets our anniversary or my birthday. I wouldn't allow him to forget. Never mind the emails saying "I want this thing" a few weeks before, I make a point of saying "don't forget, this coming up" I read constantly about people who suffer their ILs in silence instead of saying anything. When we got married my MIL said "what do you need me to do" and I gave her a list of things. She came back and said "how about I do this this and this instead?" After a few times of that, I finally told her "If you can't do the things I need, I don't need your help, see you at the ceremony" From then on, she was on board with what I needed her to do, not what she wanted to do.

People need to quit being all nicey nice or passive aggressive. They need to say what they mean and mean what they say and if other people can't handle that, they aren't people you need in your life anyway!