ASK ME NICELY SMALL CHILD!!

Not much to report again, anther fairly relaxed-if-busy day. Soft play went well, and I enjoyed LLL as usual - had an interesting conversation afterwards about whether AP is relevant to parents of older children (perhaps more thoughts about this another day, right now I'm tired)!

Jenna had a complete meltdown towards the end of soft play though, she was tired out and foolishly when she shouted at a small boy and made him cry I gave her the choice to share or leave and she shouted at me that she didn't WANT to play nicely. Another episode of me putting her shoes on for her and carrying her out of there yelling and kicking! As evil as this may be to the other poor parents being similarly hassled it was encouraging to see on the way out that at least three other children were being helped into coats with accompanying wails.

In this case I can see just how it would have gone if I had been in permissive mode. She would have wanted to stay (what child wants to leave a play area?) and she would also have not got any less tired. As it was, she had big feelings about leaving, we talked all the way down the street about how cross she was with me and she was distracted by the sight of a food shop and started the "I'm hungry" whine instead!

We keep having conversations about how to ask for things, but right now she is definately having a whiney month (or possibly more, hard to keep track). So I reminded her that she hadn't even asked me for anything and I certainly hadn't had chance to say no yet, and was there something she needed to say *before* protesting that she was starving and nobody ever feeds her? She laughed and said demurely, "Mummy, please may I have something to eat?"