There has been a lot of very strongly felt emotions in my house lately. And when you are four that often means a lot of screaming. Loudly because, when you have three other sisters, sometimes you are sure that the only way you can possibly be heard is by screaming.

Even when you haven’t started at a normal volume. Because screaming gets so much better results so much faster as well. It doesn’t matter if it seems rude – it just works and when you are four, getting things to work the way you want them to — is the most important thing.

But it is hard for those of us who live with you. Who want to communicate with you and make things better, but at the same time don’t actually want to be shouted at. Especially when we are right next to you, especially when you walk into the room at volume 11.

Yet I know this is partially a phase. That while it feels like you are being louder than your sisters ever were at this same age of 4, you probably are not, you are all probably about the same. It is just that with each additional daughter there has been an additional voice and that is what makes it all seem, well, just so much louder.

There are times when we have physical reactions to you, when we honestly just cringe at the sound of your voice because it is so LOUD. Because even though six months ago you were really good at using your please and thank you’s, now you don’t want to use them at all. You just want to clearly speak what you need, and right now it usually comes out as demands.

This is a hard stage for me to parent. Because on the one hand, I am so excited that you can finally most of the time tell me clearly what you need and want (as the difference between the two doesn’t make sense in your brain yet). But at the same token the way you are demanding rather than asking, the way you are yelling rather than speaking, the way you are at times just so rude, makes it really hard for me to respond in a loving manner.

I want to teach you the skills so that you will understand that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar or in your case shouting.

I want to teach you that you can tell the universe clearly what you want, without losing any of your power but also without sounding like a complete and utter bitch. Because I don’t want you to be given those labels of bossy, arrogant and bitchy just because you can clearly state your needs, you know what you want and you are relentless about going after those things.

That is super powerful. At four and half you can already do that. I am so proud of you. At the same time you absolutely exhaust me. Not because you shouldn’t shine as bright as you are, but because, well the society we live in thinks I should tame you somehow. As if I could or should dull your edges so you don’t shine so bright.

I don’t want to do that. However, I do know that when you can explain your needs and desires in ways that work for all the parties involved. When you can create win-win situations. When you know how to win friends and influence people. That things go easier for you. People come to bat for you, you can make exceptions to almost any rule, and ask for forgiveness later.

These are tools I also want to give you. These are weapons as helpful as swords and arrows and a really loud voice. Being able to influence others to see your side and actually want to help you, now that is a gift that really will help you change the world the way you want it to be.

That is what I am trying to model and teach you oh dear 4. That you can get your sandwiches cut just the way you want and you can get all the milk you need in your bowl of oatmeal. But that by asking me nicely you will get it faster and I will feel better giving it to you. That your joy can shine through even when you ask with a smile.

Demands only get you so far. And where it comes to your three older sisters, it is really not very far at all. They don’t want to play with you if you get too loud, too bossy, too demanding, too bitchy. They don’t want to even be around you when you are like that, and let’s face it when they are like that you don’t want to be around them either.

So how can we meet in the middle, my youngest love? How can you learn to ask nicer while not losing any of your ability to articulate to the best of your ability what it is in fact you want? I don’t want to feel like you are bossing me around and telling me what to do. And you need to get your needs met.

Where is the middle ground?

Will you come and help me find it?

Can we practice balancing here together?

There is a picture book called Interrupting Chicken that was first shared with my family during a story time at one of our local libraries. The librarian who enjoyed singing songs and reading books to the kids apparently hated to use puppets, but for this book she got out a small finger puppet of a chicken because….

As the little chicken is getting ready to go to sleep she asks her Dad to read her a story. He starts one of the classic fairy tales, and before he has gotten too far into the story the little chicken interrupts and retells the story to a happier ending. This happens the magical three times before the Daddy chicken gives up and tells the little chicken to tell the next story whereupon the Daddy chicken promptly falls asleep.

It’s a very enjoyable picture book, whether you tell it with a chicken puppet or not, and my family has borrowed it from the library several times.

But the power of these stories, whether things that happen in real life, or that we tell ourselves, or that we pick up from beloved books, TV, movies and novels is when they become shortcuts to explaining our lives.

Interrupting chickens has become code in my family to mean that the kids have not let me or my hubby finish anything we have started that day. And how frustrating it has been to try and help them get their needs met while simultaneously getting what we need to get done, done.

There are other short cuts in my family. 1201 is code for when you are so overwhelmed by emotion or sensory input, or noise or whatever that your brain just wants to or actually does shut down and you need a few minutes of quiet to reboot yourself. This comes from a trip to Kennedy Space Center and learning that 1201 was the code that the computer in the lunar lander sent to NASA right before Neil Armstrong had to take over piloting the lunar lander so they could land safely on the moon. The computer got overloaded with information and had to reboot 50 feet from the ground.

Another one is I am undecided about spots which is hard to explain if you’ve never watched the British version of the sitcom Coupling toward the end of the last season and watched the couple having an argument over whether their new couch cushions should have spots or stripes. But in my marriage it has come to me that we really don’t care and could the other person just make the decision please. IT is helpful to have a short hand of this, especially in public where someone might think we should both have an opinion about something.

Troll Droppings is a nice way of saying all the shit that ends up everywhere in the house the moment your child becomes mobile. But also includes the stuff the cat drops on the floor or the dog leaves lying around. Especially Troll Droppings is the morass of stuff that is on the floor and really needs to find it’s way back to its home or get dumped in the trash. Seriously where do they find all this stuff to leave on the floor? It can also include sticky finger prints, and mud tracked through the house. Pretty much anything and adult didn’t leave behind. Think Family Circus and Not Me and I Don’t Know, their friendly household poltergeists.

Do you have code in your family? Are their short cuts that explain things? Do you nerd out and answer the kids when you are going for a family drive and they want to know where that you are taking the second star on the right and going straight until morning? Do you occasionally draw out the word legendary with a wait for it in the middle?

What is the family lexicon in your life?

No one told me that it starts well before they become teenagers. At least if they have two x chromosomes it does. I swear it starts at like 9.

With my first born, my hubby and I were on the receiving end of all the attitude and explosive emotions and all the pain. As her body developed and grew. At almost 11 ½ she still hasn’t become a woman in any sense of the word, but some of the emotions have settled down a little bit, at least compared to her 9-year-old sister.

My second born has thrown most of her attitude at her sisters. She appears to be this lovely, easy-going and generous 9-year-old that you would love to have as your buddy in Girl Scouts or on your building team. But if you are her sister, not a day goes by (sometimes it feels more like not an hour can go by) where she is not screaming, yelling or otherwise in a huff just because you exist.

We didn’t spot it immediately, because it wasn’t directed at us. We didn’t even realize it was happening and I am still not totally sure how much it is happening, because you know I am not with them 24/7 and giving them my full attention, I have a business and household to run as well.

But it is happening. We can hear it in the timber of her voice — in how quick she is to fly off the handle. It’s as though something has happened since she has turned 9 and her ability to hold onto her shit instead of losing it has disappeared.

Dinner time is not a lot of fun any more. Because she is rude to her sisters, forgets her please and thank you’s and is often overly tired anyway. Combined with my 11-year-old who should be crowned the queen of sulking and holding a grudge and it can make for a very interesting table. Because my youngest at four is having a very hard time communicating exactly how she wants things to go and to be. Because of that she is often throwing those intractable tantrums that only a 4-year-old can throw. At least most of the time my 6-year-old is pretty mellow.

Maybe I saw these warnings before I had kids. I might have just ignored them in my pre-kid bliss brain of I’ve been a camp counselor, I can handle this shit. I think mainly I heard that it’s the teenagers that are hard to deal with, that take more time than the toddlers, that are the emotional roller coasters without a pre-frontal cortex to soften any of their edges.

I missed the memo about the 9-12 year-olds. Totally missed it, and what is funny is that as my years of a Camp Councilor, that was always the group of kids I was given, the 8-12 year-olds was always where I started and the groups I worked it.

But I guess because I was “public” and therefore not their parents I didn’t see the worst. Or maybe because they slept in their own tents and not in mine, and that I had them at most for three weeks at a time, that made a difference. Anyone can get through 3 weeks right?

But when they are your own kid and they don’t go away and no matter how hard you think about the fact that they come into the world with their own personality, it can at times be very hard to not take their behavior personally. Either as a reflection of you, or aimed at you, when often you are just their safe person to help them try and deal with the emotions that are overwhelming their body.

It is still yucky winter here, so some of the tools that help my preteens are a little harder to reach. Once it gets a little less icy we can do more hiking.

There is something about being out in the woods climbing a hill that seems to calm my kids down and seems to work out all the frustrations of being in their bodies. My eldest is often in the lead and my middles are busy chatting and my youngest is either holding my hand or her dad’s and up the hill we go.

I need the weather to break just a little so we can do this. I am personally getting a little tired of walking the neighborhood, though I still try and drag them out to do it every day. For some reason this year the dance parties aren’t really working. Maybe it’s a lack of floor space, maybe they just have too many opinions about how they should dance. Maybe it’s because every time I think of holding a dance party all I can see is the mess they have yet to clean up on the floor. I don’t know, I just know that hasn’t been working very well.

And we need something. We need to find new ways to communicate, to help my daughters learn to deal with their raging hormones and emotions and to understand that sometimes you just have to lean into the feeling so that you can move on to the next one, and that ignoring it or trying to tamp it down only makes it blow up in your face later. Not that I have that one completely worked out myself, I am still working on that one and feeling like it is safe enough to cry.

Maybe I could just convince them to get a little more sleep? Because sleep is an important part of all this growing and getting bigger, and when they sleep I can sleep, or at least not have to be a parent for a while. All this parenting gets so tiring sometimes. So very, very tiring.

And just think in three more years I will have another 9-year-old, with another one about 20 months behind her. I wonder if I will have any more wisdom, or if they will have just come out of left field as well?

Some days getting my kids dressed is a full blown mission. And at 11, 9, 6 and 4 you would think it wouldn’t be that hard. I know perhaps if I sent them to school it would be easier because they would have to get dressed every day in the morning, but honestly between play-dates, errands and Girl Scouts they already have to get dressed on a regular basis most days.

But lately I don’t know if it’s because it’s the middle of winter and we had a cold winter to start with, or what exactly it is, but none of them want to get dressed in the morning, or at all. While honestly I really don’t care, – I mean at least pajamas cover all the important bits – lately I have found that the more they are in pajamas the more they fight and complain about not feeling well, and give me the worlds biggest sighs about doing the few chores we ask them to do do around the house. And just general prickliness. So really I think that asking them to get dressed, to make an effort to put more than one layer of clothes on would really help improve our day-to-day living.

They however could care less. Because I structure my day to get my client work done in the morning when at all possible, they are able to get away with not getting dressed until probably lunch time. I mean who really wants to fight with them about clothes? They have too many fucking clothes as it is and they are strewn all over my house, their bedrooms and are constantly in a state of needing to be washed or folded.

My hubby and I are super close to only letting them have three outfits for summer clothes this year because we are so tired of seeing the same clothes ending up in the to-be-washed pile, even though they haven’t actually been on a daughter’s body. Nope they haven’t been worn at all and yet there they are needing to be washed again because someone dropped them on the floor and walked on them, and no on really wants to be wearing stepped on clothes, do they?

But seriously what is it about not getting dressed? They would be warmer and less irritable if they had more layers on. Because we heat our house with fuel oil it is never going to be that warm in the winter, maybe if we used wood or solar power or something it would be, but as long as we are burning dead dinosaurs I am not turning the heat up. Sorry, you each have about a dozen sweatshirts/sweaters/jackets, so you really could just put another layer on. Not to mention everyone has multiple pairs of thermals. So seriously.

Recently all my hubby’s socks have gone missing. And I know I am suppose to care, because you know everyone should have socks, but since handing the laundry over to my 9 year old I have tried as much as possible to stay out of the whole laundry thing. But I think I am going to have to go hunting for socks for him this week. I don’t know where the hold up is, if they are not actually getting washed, or if they are not getting folded. Because my girls seem to think that they can ignore the rags, socks and handkerchiefs at the bottom of the laundry baskets until they fill half the basket and I complain I mean point out that they really should be folding and putting away those items as well.

By and large my hubby has socks all the same color so it’s not really a matter of trying to match up different pairs of socks. Of course it is possible that there is a stash somewhere in our room of socks that never made it to be washed in the first place. I will be looking for that stash, rather than focusing on other areas where the socks might be. Other locations that they could be hiding, sound like something the laundry processor and my husband need to deal with. Now if I can find where they haven’t been washed than that part of the problem could be solved by an adult. Potentially.

But seriously why not get dressed? You have plenty of clothes. You would think the duck loving girl would get dressed before going out to see her ducks, but since it is cold enough to warrant snow pants, she just puts her snow gear on top of her pajamas and away she goes never actually bothering to get dressed. What is more she is happily dressed quite early on weekends, there just seems to be something about weekdays when I am the only parent home, and where more often than not we do actually have someplace we need to be when they all refuse to get dressed.

I have even tried saying I won’t make lunch until people get dressed but that ends up just becoming the world’s biggest shit storm of unhappy girls and hangry people. I don’t try that threat anymore. And they do get dressed right before we walk out the door, but I feel like a lot of the angst and squabbling could have been avoid if only

They would get dressed!!!