He pulled my hair first!

This blog is somewhat of a flashback, but I was reminded of this incident yesterday.

A few months ago, when Christina was just breaking her thumb sucking habit, she was an emotional wreck. Apparently, thumb sucking was her main coping mechanism. She was a real *joy* that first week.

Well, one day that week Christina, Isaiah and I were hanging out in my bedroom. They were playing together and I was folding clothes. Isaiah (about 7 months old at the time) grabbed Christina's hair and yanked it. Now, I'm sure what happened next had to be an impulsive reaction--Christina reached over and yanked his hair back.

Isaiah started screaming. I looked at Christina, "What did you do that for?"

"He pulled my hair first." She said it as matter-of-fact as possible.

This is one of those moments when I really want to say something really sarcastic, but I know that by doing so I might cause my child emotional harm and I'll hear stories for the rest of her life about having to go to a therapist, so I bit my tongue. All I said was, "He's just a baby. He doesn't know that he pulled your hair."

Cue watery eyes. I think she thought about what she did. Then she looked at her brother, who was still screaming as I cuddled him. All of the sudden, the most blood-curdling wail came from her mouth. She proceeded to throw the most dramatic crying fit ever.

I am not kidding--Christina threw herself from the bed to the floor and started the biggest temper tantrum/crying fit since she was 2 years old. I was speechless. I mean, she literally hadn't had a temper tantrum in about 3 years, and I was watching her throw one on my bedroom floor. It was so dramatic that Isaiah stopped crying and looked down to watch it. After about a minute she took her thumb and started rubbing it on her cheek. It seemed to calm her down a little bit.

At that point I knew that we were going to have to work on learning some coping mechanisms. During that long month she spent a lot of time to herself trying to find new ways to deal with issues. I had no idea that thumb sucking was such a crutch. (I've been lucky enough to only have 1 thumb sucker out of my 4 kids.)

She managed to survive the month thumb free, but now she's starting to revert 2 months later. I think I need to find a more effective substitute for thumb sucking. If you have any ideas, please let me know! I really don't want to deal with that drama again.