Sigh...

We've had better days. I'm not sure if my two big boys had a serious case of the whines today, or if they were sleep deprived, or what?!
I haven't seen such crocodile tears in I don't know how long.
Here are only a couple of the scenarios.
Joseph's piano teacher is trying to teach him to count out loud while clapping the rhythm of his pieces. It's not easy, this counting and clapping at the same time thing. But seriously, by the amount of tears and agonized wailing, you would have thought I was pulling his toenails out. FINALLY, after more than 20 minutes, he agreed to *try.* And you know what? He did it!!!!! Aargh. I'd like to think maybe he learned something, but, I kind of doubt it.
On the upside, he was actually fairly pliable in his math lesson today. He listened! He let me teach him! Hurray!
Brigham was his brother's twin today as well. The tears started when I went over to sit next to him while he was doing his math. He's had my same miserable cold/cough virus for the past couple of weeks, and is never without a Kleenex, which he has, thankfully, been using. However, he's not always so good about throwing away the well-used Kleenexes which can be a little... gross. So I went over there and asked him to throw away his Kleenex, and he seriously freaked out. Tears! "You HATE me!! Joseph HATES me! Mosey HATES me! Everybody HATES me!!" Oh, my. I did my best to assure him that I don't hate him for not throwing away his Kleenexes. Brigham's biggest self-inflicted hurdle in life is that he is such a perfectionist, and demands so much from himself, that he takes *any* criticism or correction as a personal attack. Last week we were practicing the piano. There is one chord in one of his pieces on which he tends to use the wrong fingering. So as he played it, I called out, "Four and two, four and two!!" And the hysterics ensued.
"MOM, DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"
"Brigham, I'm not trying to be bossy, I'm just reminding you of the fingering."
"I KNOW THE FINGERING, I WAS DOING IT RIGHT!!"
"Brigham, I'm sorry, but you weren't. I was watching."
"NO, I WAS PLAYING IT RIGHT!"
"Sweetheart, believe me I would not have stopped you if you had used the right fingers."
"WHY DO YOU ALWAYS THINK I'M STUPID?"

Ouch.

I have never, ever, EVER, not ONE time, EVER called any of my boys stupid. I don't think I have ever even told them that something they *did* was stupid. I generally don't like that word applied to anything in our house.
I realized that, to Brigham, when I was saying, "Two and four," he was hearing "You got it wrong again and you're stupid."
This is a hard one to combat. I tried to tell him that I do not think he is stupid. I think he is a brilliant piano player. I think that this is a hard piece, and the fingering is tricky. I told him I'm reminding him of the fingering so he doesn't reinforce incorrect neural pathways in his brain (we talk about this a lot).
But what can I do when he hears even the gentlest correction as an attack on his character?
I think I have some of these same tendencies, and I know Brigham's daddy does, too. :-)
Part of the answer is to make sure to have a very high ratio of positive to negative comments, and I try hard to do this. But Brigham can really take the meaning of "over sensitive" to new heights.

Anyway, it was a tough day. And the boys were verbally sniping and jabbing at each other all day too, which did not help. I told them they were acting like our bully goldfish who successfully ATE 6 of his bowl-mates by just grabbing a bite out of one every now and then as he passed by. (Disclaimer-- I didn't know the goldfish was doing this. I just thought our fish kept dying and was a little puzzled by why I never found the dead fishies floating around. And then, I saw that dumb goldfish eating the very last bowl-mate of his. It was already dead. I watched the goldfish, and he would swim around, and every now and then, when he got close to the dead fish, he'd just rip off another piece. It was pretty horrifying.). The boys were doing this to each other. Just jabbing out, verbally at each other when they got too close.

The three of them get along remarkably well most of the time, so a bad day every once in a while is pretty understandable. But it was pretty exhausting for me.