I have a lovely five year old daughter. For the sake of brevity I am not going to list all of her wonderful traits which are numerous. We love her a lot. My husband and I both make sure to give her 100% devoted time every single day, as we are aware that quality time is her love language of choice. Especially with a new baby of one month in the house, she needs that time.This isn't a new issue we are dealing with but it's been greatly increased since baby sister showed up and it's making me and my husband very burnt and stressed. We are finding the five year old far more difficult now than the infant!For lack of a better word, we feel policed in our own home by a five year old. We cannot function without her insinuating herself into every activity and it's gotten tiresome to the point that we have started feeling resentful, so I'm seeking advice.Examples.. involving the baby, she will tell us when she feels we should be putting the baby down, giving her to the other adult, feeding or stop feeding her, changing or bathing her.. just trying to dictate how we care for the baby, or when to dump her off when she is over seeing us interact with the baby. We meet this with some variation of "this isn't your decision to make" but at 30 times a day, it's gotten old and we are sick of the intrusion on every moment.Food things, if I so much as eat a peanut she wants in on it and acts wounded if refused, even if she just had her own meal, even if the handful of peanuts IS my meal, even if she is CURRENTLY eating a meal including peanuts. We meet this with "X is mine, you have or had Y, you don't need to eat this because I am" times however many times a day we try to eat. It makes us feel ridiculously controlled.Personal care, she will come and try to lurk when we shower, go to the toilet, brush our teeth, get dressed, she is like an ever present supervisor. We shut the door and she lurks outside. We tell her we need privacy but the message doesn't get through. We need to do it literally every single time. It makes my blood boil and I come out mad every single time and have to fake that I don't want to give her a good shove at that point.If we manage to have a moment where we aren't visibly doing something, this is the worst, like this very moment now as I look idle on the couch and type this. I've been interrupted three times and TOLD not asked to read this book, I'm a genie ask for wishes, go wake up daddy and the baby.The redirection doesn't work for more than a minute. We feel like the child's attention cup is never full and she NEEDS to have a hand in literally every moment and action of our lives. We need help breaking this cycle because I'm finding her insufferable and when she comes out of her room I find myself shrinking inside, like what now?Again, we make and dedicate time for her EVERY SINGLE DAY. We announce that it is OUR SPECIAL TIME with her because until we did that she was having outbursts saying we never spend time with her... this predates the baby, but the baby has flamed it up more with her feeling neglected.She only considers it "spending time" though if it is pretend play through which she bullies and controls the whole time which I refuse to do. She will not modify her playing style, it becomes a fight, so I refuse and I allow her to choose books, art or board games for our time but this doesn't fulfill her. Because we don't do the 'pretend play' aka being ordered around, she isn't satisfied. I feel like I get enough of being told what to do by this kid and the idea of doing that for leisure time makes me feel really put out.This child is NOT neglected though. If I gave her any more time it would be at the expense of something else, the care of the baby, being able to prepare a meal or just to my own sanity because I don't have any more to give.But I feel like I live at the mercy of a really strict work supervisor who paces around the house all day with a clipboard and is like "mommy, sitting? That's not ok. You need to get in my room and play barbies.""Mommy, eating? Only I get to eat, drop that cracker!""Mommy, taking a pee? You've been in there 19 seconds and I need you to be a genie, move your ass or I'm going to dock your pay!"And the sad and disappointed look on her face when she is refused or told to back off (nicely as we try to be) just makes me feel like I'm the worst and the kid is going to grow up and need a lifetime of therapy because mom didn't give her 7 hours a day of 1:1 time.What do I do, what can I do to help her feel more secure or more satisfied so that she doesn't feel the need to be all up in every single moment of existence? I can't relate, as a child I didn't give a crap where the grown ups were, I was content to do my own things and didn't stalk the adults all day. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2PDqUMm
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