Hindsight is 20/20 and/or I'm Stupid

Dark Side Wii, I will never underestimate
your power again.

A couple weeks ago, our Wii went to the Dark Side.  It didn't die entirely; we could still stream Netflix through it.  However, it petulantly refused to play the games.

We tried cleaning the lens with some special doohickey, and that didn't work.  And then ... I kind of let it slide.  The kids are enjoying Netflix, and no one complained (much) about the lack of Lego Star Wars.

Meanwhile, we were preparing for school to start, which ramped up Little Dude's anxiety, which in turn ramped up his, um, "less-than-cooperative" behavior.  By last weekend, I was being screamed at daily.  Sometimes the screams were incoherent, but mostly they went along the lines of "I hate you! I wish I didn't live here."

I don't take it personally when he says things like that.  At the moment, it's his way of expressing frustration and anger.  We try to give him different words to use, by saying things like "I understand that you're feeling frustrated."

Yeah.

When he's screaming, it's not that effective, but presumably it'll help down the road, right?  I also say things like, "I'm sorry to hear that, but I still love you."  Sometimes I'll drawl it out all lovey-dovey, "but I love yooooo-oooooou."  I've got a 50-50 shot that that'll make him laugh enough to distract him from the screaming.  (Alternatively, it makes him scream more.)



While I don't take it personally, I really don't enjoy being screamed at.  This is probably stating the obvious, but in general it's very stressful to be nearing someone who's screaming, and especially when the person is screaming "I hate you!" at you.  It's also not that good for Little Dude's three older sisters, who are all pretty sensitive to sounds and have anxiety issues.

Pro Tip: Headphones
that protect hearing also
protect sanity when your
little brother is screaming.

For some reason, it dawned on me last weekend that the Lego games on the Wii are an integral part of Little Dude's stress-coping mechanisms.  He uses them to zone out.  He's mastered the games, they're predictable, and he knows where every little bonus canister lies.  The games help him relax and be less screamy.

Duh.

It has been suggested in the past that I use it / withhold it as reward / punishment for Little Dude, to encourage him to potty train or whatever. I always said no, because it's too much a part of who he is.

I knew this.  And yet I chalked his behavior up to school anxiety, without giving him a a way to release the stress.  Sure, we play outside, we wrestle, we snuggle, we do all those things that help relieve stress. But the one thing that he's been using for the last three years wasn't there.

Why am I so stupid?

I don't know.  Maybe it's because I'm also trying to problem-solve eleventy thousand other issues.  Maybe it's because the Wii isn't that important to me, so I didn't see it as being important at all.  Maybe it's because I am triaging crises on a minute-to-minute basis, and barely have time and energy to take a breath and re-assess the larger picture. 

Somehow this relieves stress.

Or maybe it's just that hindsight is 20/20.

We bought a pre-owned Wii at a good price, hooked it up, and let all the kids zone out for an entire afternoon.  We played Just Dance as a family, and we played a lot of Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones.  Most of the family never got out of pajamas.  And Little Dude was happy.  And he hasn't screamed at me for a whole 36 hours.

I don't mean that the Wii solved all our problems, or that it's the end-all and be-all of stress management tools.  But it is very important to Little Dude.  So I'm going to continue to let him play "too much" Wii, or what would be too much for a typically-developing, non-Little-Dude kid.  I'm going to try to think in a more balanced way about the stress of my kids; not just what we're doing to reducing stress and help them develop coping skills, but what we're doing to release stress.