One thing that has worried me lately is the fact that the boys are so much more aggressive than our little lady and she just gets run over. She’d recently just been turning the other direction and dropping her toy or getting off of the horse if the boys even approached her. She was NOT going to get into it with them because they could take her out! Well I don’t want her to miss out on all the good toys (or her big blue dog – her fav riding toy) so I tell her, stay put, fight back, it’s yours, and then I try to keep the boys out of her immediate reach for a few minutes so she gets a little peace. (This is not any parenting technique I read about, so maybe I’m all wrong for not letting them work it out themselves.)
Then this weekend – she fought back!!! She yelled at the biggest brother when he approached her rocking! She actually pulled a toy out of both boys hands on separate occasions, to heck with the consequences. Maybe I shouldn’t be cheering this behavior on, but I was so thrilled to see her taking what she wanted instead of just giving up – way to go little sister.
And in another first, we went to a little friend’s first birthday where there were several first/only children their age – I quickly realized we have tough kids. Apparently, when you have triplets, they toughen up pretty quickly because there’s always another child there to pull your hair or sit on top of you or take your toy, even when mom tries to keep that to a minimum. So our kids are just nonplussed about everything – it was pretty cool to watch. Someone takes your toy – eh, who cares? Someone rolls over your foot – that’s nothing! But the other kids, wow, it was an earth shattering event. On the way out, you could tell Bray was proud that we had the “tough” kids 🙂 (Poor little bit – she didn’t stand a chance!)
Way to go, little lady! You tell those boys!