Recently, my wife and I start to notice a disturbing behavior trait in our little girl. Whenever we came home from work, our little girl will start running to us and exclaimed happily she "ta didi" literally meaning she beat up his little brother. We thought she was just trying to be cheeky, that's all. But, soon she started graduating to pushing her little brother down to the ground and even snatches toys and stuff out of Izaac's hands.
We are exasperated! Any parent out there can sympathize with us?
As young parents, we do not have much experiences dealing with children before and we are not confident on how to go about resolving this particular tricky problem. Couple that to our heavy work schedule, most of the time we are guilty of committing the cardinal sin of neglecting our children to some extent. We are virtually dependent on my mum and maid to really take care of them.
Just yesterday, while we were having lunch with my mentor, we popped up this particular issue to him, hoping to get some useful advice. Well, I'm glad we did! The insight and understanding we gleamed from him is undeniably eye opening or should I say ear opening.
According to my mentor, Amilie is trying in some way to grab our attention. She's feeling insecure now as she has to compete with Izaac for our affections. To add further insult to injury, my mum too is paying more attention to Izaac instead her as little Izaac is much more difficult to take care of.
In order to resolve this, we resolve that we should be spending more quality time for Amilie, and also the need to reassure Amilie of our love for her. Although this is just a passing phase and she will soon grow out of it, we want to be entirely sure that this will not affect her in the later stages of her life.
Throughout the conversation, we also learnt about other important things to take note of like instead of using harsh or strong tone to reprimand our kids, instead we should explained to them in a calm but stern tone. No point using harsh or strong tone as they are still young and may not understand or comprehend what they have done.
Now that we have a better understanding of the current issue at stake, we are determine not to let this happens again and we have to constantly remind ourselves not to be too bog down with work and neglect our roles in making sure our children thrive and grow up in a warm and loving family.
Well, who says being a parent is easy!
P.S My mentor is neither married nor does he has kids of his own.