Author Topic: Honorary Flower Girl - Sorta?  (Read 4871 times)

Aleko

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Re: Honorary Flower Girl - Sorta?
« Reply #45 on: August 07, 2020, 01:48:32 pm »
One thing that does seem clear from your various posts is how richly and reliably her family actually reward her for her meltdowns. Unless that changes, it seems downright unreasonable to expect her to stop having them!

Let’s take the wedding business. She sulked at a wedding last year and you’ve been so worried that she'd do the same this year that you actually were thinking of dressing her as a flower girl/princess: so clearly her last year's tantrum worked for her very powerfully. If you had actually done that - though I can hardly believe that in the end you really would have done such a thing - that would’ve been a 100% grand slam win for her: in effect you would have been conceding that "The power of Brielle’s need to shine, and the threat of a tantrum if she can’t, trumps everything - including propriety and ordinary guest good manners"!

Your next suggestion, of buying her the lovely pink sparkly suit of her choice to wear with a brooch and a bow instead of 'a plain nice church/Easter dress' as last time, so that she could look really special at the wedding, is not quite such a resounding victory but is still a pretty good result for her - especially as she has not actually promised not to have a tantrum! In the light of all the subsequent information I’m no longer worried by her statement that she’s 'still scared of a flower girl (or a few) being there': on the contrary, I’m truly awed at her instinctive strategic nous. She has characterised her tantrums as something that she has no control over but just happen to her as an epileptic fit or asthmatic attack might do, and it appears that you accept this is so - though it certainly isn't. *  Thus she has both accepted your bribe to behave properly and still reserved the right to misbehave anyway. That's masterful!

Your fallback option was to leave her behind with her aunt. That would be still a modest win for her, because weddings can be pretty boring for young children anyway. They go on for a long time, their parents spend ages making dull adult chat with a lot of grownups she doesn’t know (so she's not merely not the star of the show, she doesn't even have your full attention). Spending the day with her adored aunt and being the centre of her attention is probably far more fun than attending a wedding in a 'plain nice dress', so her threat of tantrums has still gained her something. (I also suspect darkly that having promised her that lovely pink suit to wear to the wedding you wouldn’t have the heart to say 'oh well, you’re not going to need that then' and not buy it for her! So she might well score the sparkly outfit without even having to go to the tiresome old wedding.)

And perhaps most of all, she’s made this wedding all about herself.  Made herself the centre of all your attention instead of you thinking about your friend, to the extent that you admitted you almost came to wish it wasn’t going to take place at all.

And then there are all those tantrums at concerts. Yes, some other child is getting all the attention of everyone there: she can’t do anything about that. But by having a meltdown she can stop her own parents, who ought only to care about her, from paying attention to and admiring this other child. And then you and your husband, it appears, reliably abandon this child's performance and rush out with her, comfort her, denigrate the other child - or at least her skills and hard work - to make her feel as good if not better as her. It sounds as though you don’t let yourselves show the slightest disappointment at missing that child’s performance, or let her know that her behaviour has embarrassed you in public. Rather, it sounds like a perfect love-fest: her parents, pulled firmly away from any other children and focusing on re-stressing their love for their princess, their only kid, which as you and she both know is what she wants most.

I don't mean to suggest at all that she is consciously manipulating you and your husband; she has just learned subconsciously from you to need your loving admiration and exclusive attention, and how to go about getting it. She may even subconsciously believe that it's what you too really want, since you seem to participate so lovingly and animatedly in her meltdowns.


 * Which are almost certainly not uncontrollable. Does she ever have them, whatever the provocation, in front of an audience whose sympathy she can't count on? For instance, a teacher who might say 'Really, Brielle! Pull yourself together and behave!' Or the rest of her dance troupe, who might stand around and giggle 'Look at Brielle crying like a baby!" I doubt it. Which means that she has them because they work for her; and she's not likely to stop having them (why should she?) unless they stop working for her.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2020, 04:34:30 pm by Aleko »
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