The enforcer

Violet has loved climbing and jumping on me since she first became mobile.  I have tolerated it for years, but now that she's a little bigger and stronger, I've decided it needs to stop.  I have nothing against playing, even rough housing with your kids.  But when I'm obliviously talking to my friend and suddenly get hit with 35 pounds of knees and elbows, I get pretty mad. She does this a lot, too, and many times it's either after I'm done and I've told her to stop or when I'm not even remotely paying attention.  She's not extremely heavy, but since I'm small and slightly spacey, I get knocked over pretty easily.  She's also the boniest child I've ever seen and has no idea what putting her elbow on my thigh and then resting her entire weight on it does to me.  It's not pretty.

I've strategized a plan for making her stop.  She needs to realize that people get hurt when she does that.  However, enforcing this plan kind of makes me feel like this:

Okay, not that bad.  What I do when she won't stop running and jumping on me is put out my hands in front of me to stop her.  I'm not sure why she doesn't realize that she will fall over if my hands are there, but she gets really mad when I do that.  "MOM!  You pushed me!  That wasn't nice!"  No, Violet, you were jumping on me after I told you to stop and you ran into my hands and fell over.  Sorry you got hurt doing exactly what I warned you not to do.  Same goes for if she jumps on my arms-- I simply don't catch her and she falls on the ground, claiming that I "pushed" her. 

Yeah, she really hates this.  I kind of feel like a mean mom, but it's really hard for me to have sympathy for my kids if they are doing something I've repeatedly warned them not to do.  One way or another, she has to learn that jumping on people is dangerous.  Especially with me around.