Behavior | Goddess in Progress

Archive for Behavior – Page 2

Sad and Glad and Bad

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· October 21st, 2010

I did something rather out of character today.

I deliberately skipped the nap for both kids.

I know, I know. Pick your jaws up off the floor. But I have come to a few very, very sad realizations.

1. My kids can handle a day without a nap. Not every time, of course. But today, along with some other days we’ve had, they have gotten through more or less until bedtime without a complete meltdown.

2. On the days that they do nap (which is still every day for Rebecca, maybe 3-5 times a week for Daniel), it takes them much longer to fall asleep at night. Long gone are the days of “sleep begets sleep” that I swore by in the infant days, when a better nap meant even better overnight sleep. Nope, no more. This has been the case for a while, but it hasn’t been problematic until recently, when the miscellaneous requests for water, backrubs, rearranged blankets, and the like, have gotten a bit out of hand. Not total chaos, but definitely prolonged stalling. There are nights when one or both of them is still awake at 9:30 or even 10, which is entirely too late, even if they are staying in their rooms. The days with no nap, however? Asleep within minutes of finishing the final song.

Tonight, I really needed them to fall asleep right away. I couldn’t risk marathon naps from either of them this afternoon. So, instead of going home after school, we went to the mall for lunch and playing. Came home and watched a TV show. Hung out and played. Rebecca briefly talked about being sleepy as we left the mall, but stayed awake in the car and seemed to catch a second wind after a little Super Why. I never spoke of napping or the skipping thereof, I just kind of pretended it wasn’t happening. I didn’t want to even introduce it as a topic of conversation. We had an early-ish dinner, and early-ish bedtime, and that was that. They were fine.

Sad and Glad, all at the same time.

Sad to realize that the afternoon nap is, indeed, on its way out for good. This is a huge bummer. While the kids did fine this afternoon, I was the one getting kind of cranky and wanting that break. Glad, of course, because at least they were able to handle it without turning into total beasts by 4PM.

Nearing the end of an era. Dammit.

Comments (11)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, Sleep

Messages to our children

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (14)· October 6th, 2010

I’m doing this month-long photo workshop through Big Picture Classes called “Picture Fall.” Every morning, we get an email with a prompt for that day’s photo assignment. Our Day 5 prompt was “little reminders.” It was about self-talk, reminding ourselves of what’s important, what we hope to do, how we hope to act, that sort of thing. Most especially, people were taking pictures of words. And if we didn’t have something hanging around, we were certainly welcome to write out our own reminders. I spent the morning trying to think of what my reminder was, or what I wanted it to be. And, ultimately, I wrote a note and took this picture.

I was thinking about what kinds of feedback I give my kids, and how that feedback is creating their self-image. Most especially, I was thinking of Daniel. He’s my more challenging kid, I can’t pretend otherwise. No matter how many times I tell him not to, he still wants to put things into the floor grates, or climb where it’s not safe, or any number of other things he’s not supposed to do. He dawdles, he gets distracted, he is randomly defiant, he gets disproportionately upset if something is not done precisely to his specific (and unspoken) desires. And so I get tired and cranky and I correct and I yell and I send him to time out. And then I stop and think: how many negative things did I say to my son today? How many positive? Are those two numbers anywhere near what I want them to be?

I’m not trying to flog myself for being a horrible parent. This job is really, really hard, and we all have times that we don’t do as well as we want. But I have to try to do better. While I don’t want to over-praise for non-accomplishments (yes, I read Nurtureshock), I don’t want my children to think of themselves as incapable, bad, wrong, or anything else, and I certainly don’t want to ever be the one who sends that message. The challenges get a lot of airtime here, maybe because it’s somehow more compelling to write about the really hard parts. And honestly, do you have any interest in reading post after post about how my children are geniuses and kind and did I mention darn cute? Please, that gets old.

But they are. My children are amazing people. They are funny and wonderful and kind and polite and smart. And yes, darn cute, too. Yes, I have high expectations for them, behavior-wise and otherwise. But I don’t ever want them to think that I don’t adore them, to infinity and back again. I don’t want them to wonder if I’m proud of them for exactly who they are, not who I wish they were. I wish for my kids to be exactly the wonderful people I already know (with, maybe, a little more self-control on the floor grate thing).

I’ve been reading about the “It Gets Better” project, and my heart breaks with every single video I watch. (If you haven’t seen Tim Gunn’s, I defy you to watch and not tear up.) I’m not sure I even have the words. These kids, these teenagers. Every day is a struggle, of trying to figure out who you are, what you’re about. A struggle against being called names, beat up, and tormented in ways I didn’t even imagine when I was in high school. And for some, it gets so bad that they withdraw, they retreat into destructive behaviors, drugs, or worse. They find it so awful, they decide life isn’t worth living anymore.

Please. Please let my kids get the message that they are always safe with me. Please let them always know that I will go to bat for them. That I will give every fiber of my being to keep them safe. That I will always love them. That, while I will be picky over their boyfriends and girlfriends, that is only because I expect them to treat and be treated with respect and honor and love and dignity, not because I give a crap about that person’s gender, race, religion, or anything else. That I always, always think that they are deserving of respect, and that I expect them to show the same respect to others.

Am I getting ahead of myself, worrying about the struggles of LGBT teens when what I’ve got at home is a pair of mischievous three-year-olds? Maybe. But maybe not. It all starts now, doesn’t it? It’s never too early to instill a sense of self-worth, that who you are is good and appreciated and unconditionally loved, even if we still have to enforce boring 3-year-old rules. It’s never too early to teach our children to be kind and respectful, and to do so in large part by demonstrating kindness and respect to them. It’s never too early to make my kids feel safe enough that they know they can always come to me.

Maybe I’m going off the rails a little bit. Maybe the pregnancy hormones are getting the best of me, and I should step away from the internet (and Glee last night, holy cow). But sometimes we have to stand up and say out loud what we believe.

I believe my kids are amazing, and I always want them to know how much I value them, and that I will always love them and stand up for them and their rights.

I believe my kids, and all people for that matter, should feel safe and cared for. At the forefront of my mind today, that means I want them to feel safe if they discover/acknowledge/feel/etc. that they are L/G/B/T.

I believe my kids, and all people for that matter, should be able to find love, regardless of gender or race or any other demographic checkbox. I want them to be able to do so without fear.

Is that really so much to ask?

Comments (14)

Categories : Behavior, Discipline, Preschoolers

Tags : accepting our children, it gets better project

Adjustment

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· September 28th, 2010

There are a great many times in my everyday parenting life that I am grateful for my fellow mom friends, both in person and through the blogosphere. Especially those whose kids are the same age as mine or a little older, because even when the warnings feel like doom and gloom, at least I’m moderately prepared for the truck that is about to run me over.

This week, I’m glad that so many of you have related stories of a delayed adjustment period to big changes, like starting school. Plenty of friends told me something along the lines of, “the first couple of days will be alright, it’s the second week that will kick your ass.” Um, YES.

As always, my kids have faced this transition in different ways. Rebecca was excited for weeks and weeks ahead of time, did well in class, and then finished the first couple of days in tears. It was obvious at pickup that she had been just fine all morning, but fell apart when she saw me, or found something to get upset about as soon as we got in the car. Clearly, she was tired, all wrung out from a morning of newness. But, I have to say, it passed very quickly. By the third day, there was barely a whine. Just chattering and barely-comprehensible answers to the typical “what did you do in school today?” from me. And even during the initial weepy phase, she still got up the next morning and skipped her way into the school building.

Daniel, on the other hand, is my delayed reaction. He was Mr. Enthusiasm the first couple of days. But now, it seems, the fact that he is actually going to have to keep going to school is sinking in, and he’s not real sure how he feels about it.

In the morning, I usually get at least one “I don’t want to go to school today,” followed by a half-hearted “I don’t feel so good.” By the time we get to drop-off, he’s usually alright, requiring minimal-to-no convincing to get out of the car, and off he goes. When I pick him up? A smile and handshake for his teacher and a big, excited grin for me.

But somewhere between the lobby and his carseat, it all falls apart. Before I even finish fastening his seatbelt, he finds something to wail about. Doesn’t matter what. Dropped his (empty) school bag in the car? Sure. I took the juice box straw out of the wrapper without consulting him first? Why not? And then, well, he just doesn’t recover. That hour between pickup and naptime is a disaster. Whining, whimpering, wailing. Outright defiance over the most mundane of requests. Renewed wails if his grapes touch his pretzels. A complete inability to listen, and total fixation on whatever request I have denied. This was the story of our ENTIRE weekend. Needless to say, an attempt at going apple-picking was an absolute catastrophe.

I am grateful to know other moms, because I’m not sure I would have realized on my own how deeply related to school this is. I might have panicked that I was hitting another phase like this summer, or started to wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with my child, or with the way I have parented him up to this point. But with the voices of friends in the back of my head, I can step back. He’s not a brat, he’s not a horrible kid, and I do not completely suck as a parent. He’s a sensitive, reactive kid who is trying to figure out what this new routine is all about. He’s mentally exhausted, so he’s unable to recover from minor emotional setbacks or disappointments. He misses me, so he’s extra clingy at home. But he’s also MAD AS HELL at me, and boy is he ever letting me know it.

Oh, the conflict. Pull me closer, push me away. “Don’t go upstairs without me!” versus “I don’t WANT your help!” He wants to push my buttons, he wants to provoke me, he wants to know if his safe space is still safe. And I’m trying. I’m trying to stay calm and not react when he’s trying to test his boundaries. I’m trying to calmly and consistently enforce the same expectations of behavior that were already there. I am trying to say “yes” when I can, and choose only the battles that are worth fighting.

BUT OH MY GOD.

Just because I know where it’s coming from doesn’t make it much easier to deal with every day. It’s exhausting. It’s draining. I don’t feel good sending him to bed without a story, but I can only offer him so many chances to get out of a bad situation. If he chooses to dig in his heels for the umpteenth time, there still needs to be a consequence, even if I feel a little bit bad for him. And, of course, it would be a big fat lie to pretend I manage to keep my cool the whole time. I have yelled, I have gotten irrational, I have taken things away in anger when I could have found another way to deal with the situation. But if anyone knows how to push your buttons, it’s your own children. Wowza.

And, so, I am riding it out. “It’s all temporary,” I keep repeating to myself. They’re all phases. They all pass. He’s a fundamentally good kid. I have every reason to believe his behavior at school is just fine. I know it’s “normal” to come home and take out all your frustrations and stress in your most safe place, and that he does so is almost a compliment on the fact that he knows he’s loved at home. That’s all well and good, but hard to remember when he’s pitching a fit over the color of his fork.

Comments (7)

Categories : Behavior, Discipline, Preschoolers, School

Pendulum

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· August 23rd, 2010

It has happened before, and it will happen again. At least I’ve figured it out enough to have predicted it this time. My kids have switched places.

Daniel and I had a pretty horrendous July. It persisted straight through our two weeks in Chicago and Wisconsin, placing it easily in the top two most challenging trips we’ve taken. He was a pill pretty much every day. He was defiant, he was rude. He treated every suggestion of a potty break as a personal affront, and had more poop accidents than I care to remember. He napped well under 50% of the time. And though I had family around, I was without M, so ultimately EVERYTHING came down to me. He had his lovely moments too, of course, but there were so many struggles in every day, that’s the overriding memory for me. To call it exhausting and infuriating would be an understatement.

All the while, Rebecca did her very best to compensate for her brother’s behavior. Sunshine and light. Extra easy-going. Sometimes she’d even be kind enough to point it out for me, in case I didn’t notice. “Mommy, I’m doing good listening!”

But I knew the day would eventually come. Daniel would, someday, come down from this peak of intensity. Which is not to say he would fundamentally change his personality, just tone down the extremes a notch or two (or fifteen). And so he did, almost immediately after his birthday. Suddenly we had several good days in a row. Less of the life-and-death struggle that marked every naptime for the previous six weeks. Dramatically fewer random acts of defiance. Cooperation and manners. Much improvement in attitude and performance in potty training. General sweetness and snuggles and smooches. Whew.

Naturally, that means it’s Rebecca’s turn to lose her mind.

My get-along girl is now that much bossier, that much more aggressive. She’s sneaky and sassy. She has thrown a few epic tantrums, the likes of which we haven’t seen from her in quite some time. She’s clingier, she’s whinier. She lost her mind when the (familiar and beloved) babysitter came so M and I could go to a wedding. I’ve even noticed her doing a very three-and-a-half thing that I read about in Your Three-Year-Old: a sudden drop in confidence in her physical abilities. Some of it is amusingly dramatic – she collapses on a heap in the floor and is suddenly incapable of standing back up. The trials and tribulations of putting on her shoes can send her to the pit of despair. And while she used to scurry up the climbing wall at our favorite indoor playspace in no time flat, she now gets three steps up and then comes back down.

Without the live-in experiment of twins, as well as reading up on this age and talking to those who have gone before me, I’m not sure I would realize both of these sets of behaviors were coming from the same developmental place. Daniel’s defiance does not have a direct equivalent in Rebecca’s behaviors, they express this unsettled age in different ways.

This will pass, it always does. It will come again, too. If I’ve learned anything in my last three years of parenting, it’s that all the phases are temporary. Enjoy the good ones while you can, put your head down and get through the tough ones. They all pass.

Comments (5)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers

More Like Me

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (3)· July 18th, 2010

No one can agree on who Rebecca looks like. M swears she looks like me, but no one else quite sees it. My mom says she looks like my sister-in-law. Ultimately, there’s no strong resemblance to any one person in looks.

But in personality, I think she’s an awful lot like me as a kid.

There’s the funny similarities, like the fact that all she wants to do in the water is float. Or that she can often be found spinning in a circle and singing to herself. She seems to be like me from a parenting perspective, too - pretty easy, big into rules, kind of sensitive to perceived slights or sadness.

We’re at the beginning of our annual Midwestern pilgrimage right now. Hauling our stuff all over Illinois and Wisconsin to visit various family members. This weekend was the yearly family reunion for my dad’s side, and it was tons of fun as always. A pool, lots of young kids, silly games, junk food at every turn. Good times. Unfortunately, M had to stay home since he really didn’t have enough vacation days to join us.

Yesterday, in the middle of the Reunion Insanity, Rebecca woke up from her nap crying hysterically. I asked what was wrong, and she choked out, “I miss my daddy!” Oh, the heartbreaking wails. Eventually she calmed down enough that we could call M and she could talk to him. And that was when I heard the most striking echo of myself as a kid, through buckets of tears and loud sobs and a thick throat:

“I just want to go home.”

Oh, how many times I said that as a child. I was an intense homebody. My mom would drop me off to play at a friend’s house, and the other mother would call an hour later, saying I was ready to be picked up. The first week of first grade was constant tears. My first time away at camp, age 10, was an epic disaster of daily letters, begging to come home. Even my freshman year of college, I racked up enormous phone bills (OK, much of which was to my boyfriend at the time), and almost didn’t go back after Fall and Winter breaks. I transferred at the end of the year, and ended up going to school two miles from home. The fact that I have now lived a full time zone away for more than 10 years is nothing short of a miracle, but I think even that is nearing its end.

So, when I heard Rebecca all but begging her Daddy to let her go home (again today), my heart broke. Not just because we’ll be here for almost two more weeks and I certainly want her to have a good time, but because I remembered so clearly what that felt like. That intense homesickness, that desperate need to be near the things and the people that I missed.

I feel badly that I’ve passed that trait on to my child. It’s hard to feel that sad, and it took away from my ability to enjoy things like Girl Scout camp, and for sure kept me from making a real attempt to take advantage of my first year of college (even though transferring was ultimately the best decision and my second school was a perfect fit).

Thankfully, I know it gets better. I was able to go away to camp a few years later and I liked it. I traveled to Europe and had a great time. I moved to Boston and fell in love and started a family.

And, hey, I’m 31 years old and want to live closer to my mommy. So maybe that’s not all bad.

But in the meantime, I will try to be patient with her sadness and remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach, of just wishing I could be back home. I will try to help her enjoy the times when we’re away, and not just count down the days until we go back. And I’ll make sure she gets to talk to Daddy every single night.

Comments (3)

Categories : Behavior, Family, Home, Preschoolers, Toddlers, Travel

I need an old priest and a young priest

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (22)· July 7th, 2010

Seriously, forget about that whole “we’re Jewish” thing. I need to schedule an exorcism ASAP to deal with the demon that has inhabited my son.

I almost don’t know where to start. I feel like my blood pressure is through the roof, my heart is racing, and I’m liable to fall down in a heap at any moment. Such is parenting Daniel at age 2 years, 11 months.

When he is good, he is very very good. He is curious and inquisitive, always asking how something works, what we’re going to do next, and “what kind of thing” is his version of “why” in the realm of never-ending toddler questioning. He is incredibly charming. If he is so inclined, he can work a room like nobody’s business. We’ve been out for lunch and had several waitresses fawning over him and people coming over from other tables to compliment him. A barista at our local Starbucks is positively in love with him, and has started insisting I bring him in on their birthday next month. He has delightful manners, lots of spontaneous “Mama, may I pweese have X?” and casual “oh, sanks” when you give him something. He is funny and silly and bright and highly verbal and has a memory like a steel trap.

And sometimes I would like to clamp him in a steel trap.

Because the other side of Daniel is a complete psychopath. There are scarcely words to describe it. Defiant and contrary doesn’t even begin. When he’s in a mood, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say he spends about 50% of his day in this kind of mood, he is nothing short of a nightmare. Picking fights over everything, from what to have for breakfast to putting the toilet paper in the toilet. I’m not kidding. Sometimes it’s a pursed face, a pout, angry eyebrows. Silence. Daring me. I ask him to do something. He covers his eyes with his hands, face still angry. I count to 1. Staring me down. I count to 2. A shrieked “NO!” and a stomped foot. That’s three, into time out.

My kids have always handled time outs pretty well. Very often I could just send them and they’d walk there themselves. They almost never got out before I told them to. Sometimes there was crying, but not always.

Now? Now, with Daniel, it’s another way to test me. “NO! I DON’T WANT A TIME OUT!” He gets up. I put him back. He stays there, but lashes out. Hits anything in reach – the chair, the door, a book. Screams and yells at the top of his lungs. Sometimes just an angry “AAHH!” Sometimes a positively furious “NO!”

I ignore it. If he’s in his time out and not destroying anything or hurting anyone, I ignore it because I know he just wants to further engage me in another fight. The screaming continues well after the timer beeps and I (as quietly and calmly as I possibly can) tell him he may get down. He keeps right on screaming.

And then, as quickly as the nastiness begins, the psycho switch flips and he walks out. “Mommy, what are you making?”, he asks with wonder and curiosity and reverence. I tell him I’m making lunch. “Oohh. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” Yep. “Ooohhh. Sank you, Mommy.”

Literally one sentence, one second to the next. He flips from having a complete temper tantrum to back to his normal self. I have emotional whiplash from the back and forth. Because it goes back in the other direction just as fast. Sometimes I know what is likely to set him off (naptime, OMFG), and sometimes it’s a complete shock.

We were in Starbucks this morning, I gave the kids a warning that it was almost time to go home. Daniel responds with, “oh, OK! I’m ready to go now.” Tosses his chocolate milk in the trash, gleefully shouts “see you later!” to the entire staff, and practically skips out the door. I ask him to hold my hand while we cross the parking lot, and BAM. “I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME! I DON’T WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND! WAAAAAHHHHH!” Bucks in the carseat so I can’t get the seat belt on. Shouts at his sister. Get home, and he refuses to take the seat belt OFF. More crying. Another disastrous time out. Another freaky switch back to normal behavior. Back and forth and back and forth, all day long.

There are people who meet him and think I must be crazy. What a delightful child you have! He’s so sweet! So funny! So smart! So charming! But I know. I know it can, and will, turn on a dime.

I am completely, emotionally, mentally, and physically drained. I try and try not to lose my temper. I try to stay calm, stay quiet, not engage with the fight-picking and power struggles. I try to be consistent and predictable. I try not to hold a grudge from the awful times and to encourage the good ones instead of launching into a tirade about how awful he was behaving and why it’s driving me over the edge. When he flips back to nice-Daniel, I try to act happy and pile on the good attention and compliment his nice manners.

It almost goes without saying that sometimes I do a whole lot better than others. Sometimes I don’t do very well at all. Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I slam a door. More than I’d really care to admit. It’s not pretty. But I try.

I’m at a loss, to be honest. I’m not sure where to go next. I don’t know how to get rid of this insanely bipolar behavior. If there’s an effective punishment to be had, I’m not exactly sure what it is. (Did I mention he’s become a retaliatory urinator? Yes, intentional peeing when he’s extra pissed off and I send him to his room.) I’m not sure how to reward the good behavior enough for it to have an effect but without going overboard. But it’s awful. I re-read this post and know that I’m not even doing justice to the insanity. M and I sometimes just stare at each other with our mouths open, wondering what the hell just happened.

I know, from reading blogs of some of you moms with slightly older kids and talking to friends, that this is pretty well within the realm of “normal” behavior for this age. I know that the testing limits is developmentally appropriate. But, alas, that knowledge does not stop me from wanting to smack the taste out of his mouth, and we are NOT a physical-discipline family. I just want more time with my sweet, sweet boy who is so funny and so smart and so delightful. But even when that sweet boy appears, I’m still on edge. Waiting for the other shoe to drop (or for it to be picked up and thrown on the floor in a fit of rebellion).

SERENITY, NOW!

Comments (22)

Categories : Behavior, Discipline, Preschoolers, Toddlers

I’m not sure it’s progress

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (6)· July 1st, 2010

We had a rough morning. Daniel seemed to sleep a little better last night (after a complete meltdown at bedtime and resulting night terror about two hours later), but still woke up in a horrid mood and had two time-outs before even going downstairs. I could have told him we were having ice cream for breakfast and he would have pitched a fit. He pulled it together for swim class, but again protested going down for nap. Thankfully, FINALLY, he took one today. Three cheers for the new blackout shade.

Went up to get him from nap, he took a solid 2+ hours. Walk in, strange smell. Diaper in hand.

“Daniel, why did you take off your diaper?”

“Because I had to pee.”

“Where did you pee?”

“In my bed.”

Indeed. The whole bed was completely soaked. The diaper was dry as a bone.

What could I even do? The pee was cold, the incident had passed. The morning, the week, had been so intensely frustrating and draining, I had nothing left in the tank. If I got upset about this, it was clear I was going to straight-up flip my lid, possibly burst into tears. So I complimented him on knowing that he needed to pee, and suggested that the next time he felt that way, he could just go to the bathroom across the hall. I mean, at least he recognized he needed to go?

Good lord.

Comments (6)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, Sleep, Toddlers

Tags : nap strike, potty training

Full-contact siblings

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (6)· May 13th, 2010

Forgive me, those of you I’m about to offend. But I’m going to take a moment and be grateful that I don’t have two boys. As it is, with my comparatively mellow boy/girl pairing, it’s a miracle we’ve made it this far without major injury. [knock on wood, turn around three times and spit]

My kids have gotten increasingly physical in their play in the last couple of months. Grabbing and pushing in the name of toy-stealing aside, even their made-up games have started to involve a lot more wrestling and tackling than I might have guessed.

Just the other day, we were at a local indoor playspace. The “game” they came up with was that Rebecca would go first down the (rather fast) slide, and dramatically tumble and roll when she hit the bottom. Usually with an incredibly fake “ouch!”

She’d then giggle uncontrollably, lying on the floor, calling “help, Daniel, help!” And so he flies down the slide and rolls right on top of her.

If you’ve been picking up on her personality over the last two years, I somehow think the last thing you’re going to do right now is feel sorry for her and berate her “bigger” brother for picking on her. HA! You know she’s the aggressor 95 times out of 100. Daniel might be slightly more likely to get carried away as the game snowballs on itself, but not by much. She’s definitely the one who is more likely to put him in a choke hold and wrestle him to the ground.

Oh, there is a broken something coming. I can feel it. In the meantime, I’m going to take deep breaths and focus on the calmer moments, like a shared snack in between games of full-tackle Ring Around the Rosie. Ohm…

Comments (6)

Categories : Behavior, Toddlers

Tags : play, roughhousing, siblings

Potty Training, v.2.0

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· May 6th, 2010

That’s right, I’ve gotten back on the horse that so violently threw me off a few months ago. I’m taking another pass at potty-training Daniel.

The recap, in case I never quite finished the story here, is that we did a “boot camp” with him about two weeks after Rebecca’s. He did quite well for the first week. Minor accidents, but plenty of success. Wohoo. And then a week passed, and it all fell apart. It was like he simply stopped caring, or stopped paying attention. He’d have a success or two in the morning, and then it would be all downhill the rest of the day. After more than a week of that nonsense, I decided it wasn’t worth the stress/power-struggle and put him in Pull-Ups full-time. Mainly because they’re easier for the times that he actually did want to use the potty. Which, as it turned out, he did not. Zero interest. And when there’s absolutely NO potty usage, Pull-Ups are just a very expensive and messy pain in my ass. So we went back to diapers.

Anyways, some time has passed, and changing the diaper of a nearly-three-year-old is getting rather tiresome.

I asked Daniel yesterday what he would think about wearing big-boy underwear and using the potty. Previous questioning along this line has been dismissed with an uninterested “no.” Yesterday: “Oh! Yes! I would be very happy!” Um, OK. And up he ran to the dresser to choose his big-boy underwear.

And, so, we have begun again. For the moment, I am not going the boot camp route. We’ll do underwear when we’re at home, diapers when we go out and when he sleeps. I don’t trust him in the slightest to tell me that he wants to go, so I’ve been setting the timer on my phone, and he knows that when it “boings,” it’s time for a potty break. In a day and a half of being part-time in underwear, we have had no pee accidents and one poop accident. That didn’t phase him in the slightest. He did not feel the need to mention it when it happened (on M’s watch, I might add), nor did he seem like he was trying to hide it in any way.

That’s the biggest potty-training obstacle for Daniel & me. As excited as he is to wear big-boy underwear, and he is quite excited, he just doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the accidents. With Rebecca, her accidents got her quite distressed. Daniel? Meh, whatever.

At Target today, we picked out some special Lightning McQueen stickers that I plan on using for a special potty sticker chart. He’s a big fan of ice cream, so I’m thinking 10 stickers and he can get a treat from the ice cream truck or something. Just in case, I got the 2-lb bag of M&Ms, too. [As a side note, Rebecca wanted her own Tinkerbell stickers. Trying to think of a sticker-chart-worthy behavior for her, since she's already got potty training in the bag, but is clearly perturbed at the sudden focus on Daniel.]

On tomorrow’s shopping list – a few bottles of wine for Mommy.

He won’t go to college in diapers, right?

Comments (7)

Categories : Behavior, Child Development, Toddlers

Tags : boys, potty training

On and on and on

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (13)· March 29th, 2010

I’m having one of those times when I feel like I work at an insane asylum for very small people. I’ve been trying to write a post about it for three days, but can’t manage it. And, so, I present three video clips that remind me of my life right now, and why my darling boy is driving me up a fricking wall.

1. He has switched from calling me Mommy to calling me Mama. Turns out this is actually the more annoying version. Especially when you say it once every 15 seconds. “Mama! Mama? Hey, Mama?”

2. He never, ever stops talking. This is largely very cute, and his memory for detail is alarmingly good. But he has to tell you EVERY detail. And he’s 2.5, so sometimes it takes about 5 minutes to get a full sentence out.

3. We haven’t hit the “why” phase yet (and, believe me, I am grateful), but he is constantly asking questions. Weirdly obvious ones, sometimes, as though asking questions is a new way to tell a story. “Mama, where are we going?” “Where are we going after the gym?” “What are we going to do after we leave the post office?” “Mama, where are those guys going?” “Mama, what is that lady doing?” “Mama, are you peeing?” “Mama, do you have a placemat?” “Mama, are you eating dinner?”

Again, like many (most?) things this age, it is simultaneously adorable and enough to make you rip your hair out.

(This video is hilarious in its entirety, but skip to 7min for the bit I’m thinking of. Language is not really suitable for work, or for little pitchers with big ears.)