16Dec
This past weekend we went to a Gymboree birthday party for our tiny, little friend who turned one.
The birthday girl wore tights and a tutu. Could my hormones surge a LITTLE more? I think not.
We had never been to Gymboree before and so I was pretty excited. I made Chris come along with us, but he was slightly less excited about his first Gymboree experience. Party pooper.
It was fun though. There was a nice woman there who led the activities by singing loud, slightly obnoxious songs…
There were group activities and events, like riding this bouncing, imaginary school bus…
There were things to climb on…
There were lots of other kids to play with…
And yet, Bean had this expression on his face pretty much the whole time…
He would look up at Chris and me as if to say, “Can’t we just go home and watch football?”
For whatever reason, Bean was just not feeling the friendly that day. If the group of kids went this way, he went that way.
Which meant that I spent most of my afternoon chasing him down and trying to bring him back over to circle time.
But Bean seemed pretty content to just hang by himself. More balls for him if all the other kids were singing in a circle somewhere, I guess.
At first, I was really concerned. Why didn’t he want to play with the other kids? Was I not socializing him enough? Were we raising a snob? Had we done something wrong?
But then I’d see how happy he was just hanging by himself. Just taking everything in and figuring things out on his own and I’d relax a little.
I think that’s the thing I love most about Bean’s age right now. Yes, we are raising him. Yes, he has to live within our boundaries. Yes, he has to follow our rules. But despite all of that, Bean is such an individual right now. More than he’s ever been before. So, if he doesn’t feel like hanging with the group that day for whatever reason, well that’s a decision I’m going to let him make. It doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong or that I’ve raised a rude, unsocial child. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with me. It’s just how Bean’s feeling that day.
Aren’t kids awesome? I remember when Bean was born and I was so excited to finally meet him. I kept saying to Chris during that first week at home with him, “I love having someone else in our family!” But now that that little person is an actual individual who thinks and decides and reasons all on his own, it takes that excitement of having another family member to a whole new level. In a nutshell, it’s just fun and exciting every day to be Bean’s parents.
Brushing teeth in our house is non-negotiable. Every night after his bath, Bean climbs up on his little stool in the bathroom and we brush his teeth.
First, I brush his teeth for him while he goes, “Ahhhhh….” and then “Cheeeeeese…” And then he gets the toothbrush and he brushes his teeth. Which used to mean he sucked the toothpaste off the brush for a couple minutes, but in the past couple weeks has actually become Bean brushing his teeth. His newest fascination in the teeth brushing thing is the faucet and no less than 15 times in the short minute or so he has his toothbrush, he holds it out for me to run it under the water. He loves that part.
For a while, the struggle at this point was getting the brush away from Bean. When you’d take it away, he would flip his little lid and that just ruined the evening. Every single night he was going to bed all worked up because he was still so mad about having his toothbrush taken away. Finally last week, I got smart and I quit taking it away from him. Instead, I now let him put his toothbrush away in the toothbrush holder. Then we dry off his mouth and before we leave the room, Bean gets to turn off the lights (another favorite for him). Finishing that whole process seems to have curbed the crying because he gets to finish the steps, instead of having it just taken away from him.
Sound like a lot of fancy footwork as a parent? You bet. And we’re experiencing this kind of thing more often now. Turns out that 18 months old is all about doing things yourself. Bean is all about the independence these days.
At first, it was really annoying. REALLY annoying. It used to be that when we needed to get something done or we needed to go somewhere or do anything, actually, we could just do it and Bean went along with it. Now, he wants to do it all himself. Which means when we walk to the car in the morning, he doesn’t want to be carried – no matter how late we are running. He wants to walk himself out to the car. Which also means that he will want to stop and pick up a few acorns, check out the trash cans, search for lost golf balls in the garage, etc. And if you try to stop him and pick him up to get him moving again so that you aren’t late to work for the fourth day in a row, a temper tantrum erupts. And now you will be 15 minutes later.
Talk about frustrating. For a few weeks, life was all about hurrying up and waiting while Bean had a temper tantrum and then hurrying along again after he got himself together.
But someone actually posted something in the comments of this blog a couple weeks ago (sorry, I don’t know who it was!) that said toddlers take an average of 7 seconds to process a thought. When I read that, I started paying more attention to Bean and his listening skills. And 7 seconds is just about right! If I tell Bean something, he almost never starts to do it right away, especially if it’s a request that he doesn’t hear often. So, I started waiting a few seconds before I intervened with him. I’d give him the command (ex. “Bean, can you pick up your toys?”) and then sit and wait for about 10 seconds and – lo and behold! – he’d finally start doing what I asked.
Now, does he always do what we ask every time even with the 10 second rule? No way, man. Sometimes I ask Bean to do something and he looks right at me, I wait 10 seconds, I see the thought compute, and then he goes running in the other direction (which would be the BOLT! game I’ve shared with you before). He’s a toddler. Decision making is what they do. But when he chooses to make a different decision than what I’ve asked of him, we always make him stop, turn back around, and do what we’ve asked. Never harshly, but very firmly. There’s no point in punishing him for trying out his independence – that’s part of growing up. But, he still as to learn that sometimes he has to do things he doesn’t want to do and so we make him follow through with whatever our request has been.
But for the most part, giving Bean that extra little time to complete tasks himself has made all the difference in the world. It definitely takes more time to do anything right now, but we just try to build that time into our routine and schedule when at all possible. It gives him a chance to do things on his own (like putting away his toothbrush and turning off the lights) and it also teaches him about following directions and doing as he is asked. So, we move a little slower these days. We stop to pull leaves off of bushes on our way inside the house. We stop to pet Molly as we’re walking to the bath. We stop to pick up a tiny little rock off the sidewalk when we’re taking walks. All because, to Bean, that’s just part of doing a task. And as long as he accomplishes the task at this point, I’m a happy momma.
Before Bean, I thought the Terrible Two’s and toddlerhood were all about defiance. And, don’t get me wrong, that is certainly part of the game right now. But I’m learning that what I sometimes see as defiance is just part of what it takes to get Bean to get things done. Most of the time at this age, he just isn’t going to be able to be told something, walk right over and do it without some kind of distraction or disruption. He’s like a little puppy. Distraction is part of the game. But distraction and defiance are two different things and we handle them differently in our house.
What about you? How are you (or did you) handling the toddler phase? Do you have any tricks that have been particularly helpful with your child? Any suggestions or ideas for the rest of us?
A few weeks ago, I blogged about how Bean was entering the terrible 2′s a little early by enacting the Limp Noodle game in our house.
Yeah.
That’s been fun.
But now I think we’re venturing further into the terrible 2′s. I call this latest game, “BOLT!” This is how you play: Whenever your mom or dad asks or tells you to go somewhere, you BOLT! in the other direction. See? Pretty easy, right? Let’s practice.
You and your mom are going for a walk around the neighborhood and when you get back to your house, she says to you, “Okay, Beanie, let’s head back inside.” BOLT! You take off across the neighbor’s yard.
That was fun. Let’s try again.
This time you’re in your living room with a ripe diaper and your dad says, “Hey, Bean Man, let’s go change that diaper, buddy.” BOLT! You take off running and end up hiding in your closet.
Good job! Let’s do one more.
Now, you’re playing with your toys in the living room and your mom AND dad say it’s time to clean up for bedtime. BOLT! You dash into the office and this time you throw yourself on the floor when your parents corner you and pick you up to take you back to the living room. LIMP NOODLE!
See how much fun that game is? It’s a blast.
Although, from the parental unit’s point of view, this game gets old REAL FAST. It’s also hard to know how to respond because at this point, Bean is still laughing and happy when he bolts off. So, at first that made it hard to discipline him. But then we realized that happy or not happy, he can’t bolt off like that for safety reasons. If we laugh at it and chase him when we’re in the house, then he’s just going to think it’s a game when he does it outside next to a street, too. And that’s not good at all.
So, here is how we’re handling it. When Bean bolts, we catch him as quick as we can, but we don’t pick him up. We catch him by the hand and make him stand still and look at us. Then we get down to his level (thank you, Super Nanny…) and say to him, “No, sir. We do NOT run away from Mommy and Daddy,” and then we lead him back over to wherever we wanted him to go in the first place. We try to not make too big of a deal about it because we don’t want to encourage him, so after walking him out to where he is supposed to be, we forgive and forget quickly and find something exciting to do in the CORRECT place. We don’t drag on with the discipline part because then THAT becomes a game for Beaner.
It’s hard because he’s usually giggling when he does it and even when we correct him, but bolting – to me – is a safety thing. And when I think about it like that, it’s easier for me to stop the game while it’s still a game and before it becomes a behavioral problem or, Heaven forbid, a safety concern.
For now, Bean doesn’t seem to phased by the stern talking to and redirection. He just kind of laughs and goes along with us. But I can already see how that happy attitude with the bolt game could turn real quickly.
Gosh, two’s are fun, but I really thought we’d have longer before we had to…enjoy all this fun…
One of the hardest choices families make is childcare. For some lucky families, someone is able to stay home or work from home and keep the tyke there. But for a lot of families, it’s off to work they BOTH go, and so that leaves daycare or something similar as the only option. And I know how hard it is to make that decision. The first time I left Bean at a daycare center he was three months old and the tiniest little dude in the nursery. I cried out in the parking lot for half an hour. It was awful. But each day it got easier and easier, and by a few weeks into our new routine we were all adjusting nicely.
Truthfully, daycare works really nicely in our family. I like it because it gives Bean a place to interact with others on a daily basis. He learns things there that I wouldn’t be able to teach him at home, like how to sit in circle time and how to share his blocks. He likes it because he gets to do activities there that I wouldn’t have ever thought about being brave enough to do with him at home, like finger painting. And just last week a fire truck came up to his school and he got to climb up in the cab and sit with a real fireman! Now, he claps and squeals every time he hears a fire truck siren. I just love that he is getting those experiences and learning to be part of groups of people independent from me and Chris.
Sometimes we’ll be driving down the road and I’ll hear him point to something new and tell me what it’s called. Like, the other day he randomly pointed at the moon and said, “Moon.” Real simple. Like he’d been saying it for years. I didn’t teach him that, but he was learning about the sun, moon, and stars at daycare. He also started holding his hands up in the air and opening and closing his fingers as he sang, “Tink…tink…tink…” When I asked his teacher if she knew what he was doing, she said that was their hand motion for when they sang, “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” It made me smile to think that his little brain was growing even when I’m not there to teach him.
Something else I love about daycare is that there are another set of eyes who watch him and know him so well. Of course, his teachers will never know him as well as I do, but they spend so much time with him that even they can tell when he’s not feeling well or having a bad day. And they also learn different techniques with dealing with his moods and little personality that I can learn from, too.
The other day I was talking to his teacher when I picked him up about this little stomach bug he had last week. I forget exactly what we were saying and why, but she mentioned to me that she had, “mushed all his food together into his mashed potatoes…you know, how he likes it to be?”
Uh…yeah…sure…
I had never mushed all his food together in my life. Isn’t that crazy? I’m sure they teach that in Parenting 101, but I must have been absent that day because Bean’s food is always compartmentalizing into his little sectioned off plates at home. Lately though, we’ve been having trouble getting him to eat a lot and so when I got home that night I thought I’d give the mushing it all together a try and see how it went.
It was awesome!
I mixed mashed potatoes, green peas, and chunked up chicken into one big mess, threw it in a bowl, and gave the kid a spoon. In about 10 minutes, it was gone and he was asking for more. WHO KNEW?!?!
So the night after that I tried again to see if maybe it was just a fluke. I mashed up sweet potatoes, broccoli, and the last of the chunked up chicken and he ate that in record time, too, and again asked for more!
Then last night, we were having vegetable soup, so I heated up the leftover mashed up sweet potatoes, threw in some turkey, and lots of the veggies straight from the soup pot, and Bean went to town AGAIN!
It’s not pretty and it’s so darn messy, but Bean is eating like he’s never eaten before. And it was all because of one little helpful tip I got from his teacher at daycare. Someone else who spends a lot of time with him and happened to find a trick that worked.
If you’re getting ready to go down the daycare road and are anxious and upset, let me tell you something – you are in for a treat! Once the sadness and the fear die down (and they will after a while…), you’ll hopefully learn that there are some perks that come with daycare. Sure, there are trade offs – Bean gets a cold when it goes around the nursery and I do miss him a LOT even still during the day – but it’s really and truly not all bad. So, embrace it! Learn from it! Build a good, open, communicative relationship with your child’s caretaker and always remember that they aren’t just working FOR YOU, but they are spending time getting to know your wee one. Value their input and be thankful for what they bring to your child’s life.
I’m sure Bean was thankful that I FINALLY caught on to how he likes to eat. And it only took 18 months!
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