Parenting and Child Guidance

One of my classes this semester is Parenting and Child Guidance. My professor is a graduate student in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at BYU. I really like her; she's really taken a different approach to the course and has given us opportunities to do hands-on learning. Today we role-played parent-child scenarios, implementing different techniques of parenting styles. It was a really fun class and helped me to see how I might react in different situations as a mother.

With this in mind, I decided to apply what I learned in class to every day life. So naturally I used Brittany as my guinea pig! :). We walked home together after class and ate dinner when we got back to the apartment. We finished watching the newest episode of New Girl but afterwards Brittany started getting really agitated. I couldn't figure out what in the world spurred her random burst of anger! She started yelling and screaming and kicking every door in our apartment! This was actually hilarious but I kept my cool and decided to use my new found parenting skills. I told her that just because she was angry did not give her permission to fly off the handle and start kicking things around the house. This made her even more mad and she said, "Stop talking to me! I don't want to talk to you anymore!" (This was all in her mad-but-still-laughing voice). I told her that she needed to calm down and behave like a responsible adult. To which she kept screaming at me! It finally got to the point where I told her that she needed to go take a nap. To which she said, "I don't want to take a nap! I'm not tired!" I told her that she needed to go to sleep because she was being grumpy and she had a date in a couple hours. She kept saying that she wasn't tired so I told her to lay down and shut her eyes and just calm down.

The funny part in all of this is that she actually listened to me! She is sleeping in my bedroom right now! I can't believe it actually worked! ... but now I'm exhausted and I think I need a nap. Welcome to parenting, right?