Battle of the wills

Today did not start off on the right foot, in fact even saying that is an understatement. It was more of a “knock down dragout.” 3 hour “knock down drag out” to be exact, just be glad you weren’t there. The best way I can think to relate this is perhaps an argument with a toddler who does not yet speak or fully understand language. Clearly we can see that Yuri is acting out, but we also want to ensure he understands our discipline. Good thing we have years of practice with our other children…oh wait we don’t have any other children. No wonder this was so exhausting.
Don’t get me wrong, overall Yuri is a very good child—he really is. But he no longer walks on water. He is swimming like the rest of us. Yuri, we learned, is a very strong willed child and is used to being his own boss. We were bound to have a battle of the wills at some point, I suppose better sooner than later.
Oksana had to go to Odessa to help with an adoption for a week, she just found out yesterday. She tried to refuse but seeing as we are so independent we encouraged her that we would be fine. In fact, after finding out that Odessa is a beach town we thought we may even join her. The plan for today was to pack lightly and try to get tickets to Odessa today and head to the beach—simple enough right? Wrong.
First of all Yuri had an accident and wet the bed. However, he couldn’t tell us that for 2 reasons. One, of course, he doesn’t speak English. Two, what ten year old wants to say ‘hey, new parents I just wet the bed. Can you hand wash these sheets in the sink. I know that they smell like pee but we’re all family right? Luckily we picked up on it right away. Even new parents can smell pee. I know Mom, Dad I had this one coming. I wet the bed till I was like 25. Andrew finally refused to cope with this idiosyncrasy in my personality.
First off, bed wetting is probably not a huge problem for Yuri its that his parents completely forgot the whole ‘don’t give a kid gallon worth of juice before bedtime’ rule…today no liquids after noon. I do wonder if this is in fact why he makes his bed religiously. It might also explain why when he saw me this morning, he climbed back into the bed and pulled up the covers. To spare him embarrassment (and because we don’t know how to communicate that ‘it is ok its just an accident’) we changed both our sheets and his. However, he wanted to make up for the self-inflicted embarrassment by being cute to get attention. The only problem is the things he was doing were not cute, they were quote “bad behavior.” Thus the day starts….
As I was saying, we were trying to pack up for the beach. We then realized the clothes washer had stopped just before the spin cycle. Now the only clothes that fit Yuri…were soaking wet. (Sigh)Clean, but wet. There was our second obstacle of the day. No dryer and no Target. On top of these small problems is the continued stressor of Yuri acting out. To make a long story short, Yuri was misbehaving, not minding and pretending not to understand. Unfortunately for him his actions showed he clearly understood enough to know that when asked if he was sorry, he said “niet.”
Yikes, now we have a problem….. He continued to pout, cry and act ugly when we sent him to his room. Mostly it was just a waiting game. I’m not going to say it was easy—it was not. The only plus side to disciplining a child who doesn’t speak English, is you can discuss how to handle the situation right in front of him. Homefield advantage for us. We eventually had to call Oksana to interpret the instructions, explanations and rules going forward. The bad part was he tried to manipulate Oksana, too. In the end after much waiting a determined Mom and Dad (that’s us) won! Now I know you are sitting there sympathizing with him saying “ahhh the poor kid didn’t get it, give him a break.” But before you do, hear me out… When he was asked in Russian if he was sorry he promptly yelled out ‘niet!’ Finally, after what seemed like hours, a white flag. A tear stained freckled face boy emerged from his room. Papa said, in Russian ‘Is Yuri sorry?’ ‘Da’ he replied. He then told us both in English he was sorry. We then bent down, hugged him, accepted the apology and told him we loved him. It was a bad battle but a good family hug. It ruined our beach plans for the day, but Doctor Phil would have been proud.
Now that its over we are looking forward to the next battle as much as a root canal. Earlier while we were planning our next parental move (three University degrees between us outwitted by a 10 year old Ukrainian) I said to my husband “I wish I could call my Mom or Dad right now.” I then announced “I don’t deserved this I never acted this way”. Andrew smiled said, “I deserved it. Didn’t I tell you about the time Mom carried me out of Rich’s (now Macy’s) over her shoulder screaming for a $5 candy bar?”
“So this is your fault.”
We both laughed. Be careful who you marry. They may be carrying bad karma.