Compromise (or Lack Thereof)

When Charlie and I were trying to decide whether or not to have another baby (okay, really I was just trying to convince him), my brother tried to tell us that three wasn't the best idea.  Of course he loves all three of his kids, but the story he would always tell was this:  you can always get one all fired up about where you are going or what you are going to do, you can usually convince a second one to go along with the plan, but that third one will always put up a fight and won't want anything to do with it.  Lately, that's the story of my life.

I have to admit the older two are pretty good when it comes to compromise.  Yes, Andy will always grumble and Sarah will always whine (if she didn't I would seriously think something was wrong in the world), but they are old enough to understand and will stick with the plan.  It's Amanda who wants nothing to do with it and does not like to take turns making decisions.

I stopped letting the kids watch DVDs in the car for a long time because it became such an issue every time we would go anywhere.  Andy would get to pick but would get out of the car (for school or an activity or whatever) and then Sarah, who didn't want to watch what Andy picked, would ask if I would change said DVD.  Of course I would because why would I make her watch something she didn't want to watch, but then Andy at some point would get back in the car and realize his DVD had been removed.  There was constant yelling and fighting and whining and crying about what we watched that we just stopped completely.

I'm not sure when, but we started watching again.  I think Charlie was the one who started it, putting in a DVD that Amanda would like.  Of course it was something Sesame Street.  At first the older kids were just so excited to have TV in the car again that they didn't say anything.  They happily watched Sesame Street or Blue's Clues or whatever was on.  That was until we watched it 500 times.  You think I'm joking, I'm not.

After an amazingly long time they finally started asking if we could watch something else.  Something they actually wanted to watch.  I agreed and we decided we would take turns picking what was on next.  You see where this is going, right?  The big kids are pretty good about taking turns, but Amanda is not.  Plus, Amanda is with me ALL THE TIME, and when she isn't with me the other kids aren't with me either.  So, on many occasions I will remove their movies to put hers back in, and then history repeats itself.

Every time we tell Amanda it is someone else's turn to pick a DVD, she goes crazy.  Then, for the first 30 or so minutes of the movie she says, "Mommy, I want to watch Elmo," over and over and over again.  It's kind of pointless to be watching something else because she's talking over it and you can't hear it anyway.

I'm very close to ending this experiment and going back to silence.  I'm pretty sure I will not have a DVD player in my next car.  Some days I truly see the value in having an only child.