Version 2.5 update

[cahn]

-Version 2.5 of the kiddo has developed a controlling and OCD-ish streak. She's run with my parental tendencies towards trying to get her to do things independently (this was not part of my parents' philosophy at all, and I imagine is part of the usual don't-want-to-do-things-like-one's-parents phenomenon) to somewhat alarming but rather humorous extremes. For example, one of the ways I can get her to do just about anything is to say, "You'd better do X... otherwise Mommy will do it!" For another example... I can only get to the "otherwise" part of that statement, and she has to say "Mommy will do it, yaah"; if I try to finish the sentence myself, she throws a fit.

-The most exciting thing in this half-year in general is that E has been toilet-trained for a month. This was especially awesome because -- although she's been toilet-trained for our home toilet for several months now -- something clicked and she figured out how to use non-home toilets literally less than a week before our Big Trip, thus saving me from a LOT of grief during that trip. (As far as we know, airplane toilets are still beyond her, though.) (K, if you're reading this, it would not have happened without your tips and your portable potty seat rec!) Unfortunately, lately she has become sloppy at home, I suspect because she knows that when she does she can change clothes. (Which she really likes. Sometimes I wonder if she is any biological child of mine. Then she starts saying she's tired when she's clearly hungry and I know she's my bio kid.)

-The most exciting thing to me, being the sort of obsessive person I am, is that E has started to sing semi-recognizable pitches and can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on something that is, hmm, how shall I say this, locally on pitch? That is, any given four-pitch phrase is somewhat recognizable, although between phrases it is prone to dramatically change key. (She has a couple of times managed to sing most of it in the same key, although she almost always does something weird to the last couple of phrases.) She also likes to "sing" a couple of other songs that I cannot discern much pitch to at all, if any, alas, and a couple that are starting to obtain semi-recognizable pitches. She also has a favorite instrument: the bassoon. I think it is because she likes to say "bassoon," and because the bassoon is a lovely orange-ish color, as she does not actually appear to want to listen to a basson playing (although every time we listen to music, she is hopeful that perhaps we are listening to a bassoon, even though we pretty much never are). She's started trying to identify instruments when we listen to music, although she appears to use the "whatever-Mommy-said-the-instrument-was-that-we-last-listened-to-or-maybe-it's-a-bassoon" algorithm.

-It's really interesting to watch E's language development. In terms of natural verbal speech, E is getting blown away by the kids we know who have older siblings, and we're still working on the concept of the first and second person pronoun (most of her age-mates seem to have this sorted; she's starting to). She plays games with verbalization -- for example, the other day she informed me, "Bow bow bow the boat bently bown the beam!" -- that i haven't seen other kids her age do, although this may well be because I'm not their parent. (I was shocked, SHOCKED, when the head of her daycare asked me if she talked at home, because she was a little worried she never heard her talk at daycare. Because E talks constantly at home!) Also, E actually read a whole book to me last week. The book only had, like, ten words on a page, many of which were repeated, but she did read them all (like, I'm reasonably convinced that the words on the page informed her verbalization), including sounding out a couple of words that she didn't know instantly (so it's not all memorization, although I imagine much of it is memorization). She even sounds out consonant combinations (e.g., she knows the sound "th" makes) although vowels rather stump her unless they're in their simplest form. ...This indeed has a bragging component, though certainly with a healthy dose of this-doesn't-actually-mean-anything; D (whom E takes after to an alarming degree) was a similarly early reader, and by the time he was in college had become the sort of person who arranged his college career such that he did not have to write a single paper. (I am still kind of in awe that he was able to do that.)

-A couple of months ago we went to this birthday party at the zoo, featuring kids aged 1.5 to 4, and, well, let's say that a couple of kids are standing on chairs looking out at something. (An elephant, as it happened.) Now a third kid comes along. What will that third kid do? If you answered, "Get up on the chair too to see what they're looking at, or possibly just to hang out with them," you'd be right... because all the kids did this... except for E. E tended to wander off in another direction entirely. I'd always wondered how childcare providers managed large numbers of children because I was kept busy with keeping up with just the one, and now I know: they don't have large numbers of kids like E -- all the other parents were chatting in the secure knowledge that their kids were mostly hanging out in the same area, whereas I was continually having to chase after E. (Her daycare teacher has also noticed this...) This is another case of E basically being a carbon copy of her dad, who I am absolutely sure did this when he was the same age, given his poorly-disguised adult tendencies for same. However, she's getting better -- just this week her little friend came to visit and they actually interacted, which was... different, and kind of awesome.

-Inferencing is happening! When we go on family bike rides with E in the bike trailer, we usually go to the beach. D took a bike ride by himself, and when I informed E of this, she said, "Daddy go to ocean!"

-D reminds me that she has just learned how to use the paint can in Microsoft Paint. This also reminds me that last week she, overnight, decided that in addition to orange, she also likes green. (Orange has been her favorite color since far before most kids have any color preference...)

Comments

[thistleingrey]

although she appears to use the "whatever-Mommy-said-the-instrument-was-that-we-last-listened-to-or-maybe-it's-a-bassoon" algorithm

:)) heeeeee.

We have "Twinkle Twinkle" now admixed with "Baa baa Black Sheep" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", something like this: dinkle dinkle little shar, marly marly marly, baa baa back sheep, yes shir yes shir eee back fou, how i wanda shar. She truncates lines, too, obviously.... Does E stay on key better when singing together with someone? We've been playing with this a bit, and Reason corrects herself (though still pretty imperfectly) when darkforge or I sing or hum with her.

How long has E been going to daycare? Is it recent enough to count as a residually unfamiliar place, or has it been months? Reason speaks voluminously at home (relatively speaking) and almost not at all in strange situations. The pediatrician has had to take my reports of words and phrases on faith, since she's heard only sad requests to be picked up at the end of the appointment, and Reason said almost nothing for over an hour when meeting your friend.... At daycare Reason seems to consider herself a greeter who says hello to all the other parents and addresses them by name. No idea where that came from.

Thanks for the potty seat rec, btw. It seems very convenient but doesn't fit well on our toilet at home (user error?), so I will have to find out later whether she's willing to use it elsewhere. Or perhaps we'll be able to work up to it at home when she's a little taller (in May, at 18 mo, she was 34") and when sitting atop the real toilet doesn't seem so scary. We began proceedings today, more or less successfully. Looks like we'll be splitting daytime habits from nighttime ones, too, for a little while.

[cahn]

Hee, I am not sure whether E would stay on key better singing with someone because the control-freak tendencies mean that she will not allow me to sing with her. And when someone sings, she'll stop singing herself. D calls her a diva-in-training :)

E's been going to daycare for a year, but only two days a week -- maybe that's not often enough? I think in general she tends to clam up the more people there are. She doesn't object to speaking, exactly -- when I ask her to say things, like "Thank you, teacher" or "I want the blanket, please" to her teachers, she totally does, but for whatever reason she doesn't initiate it on her own. Reason's tendency to be a greeter sounds really cute.

So that travel potty seat doesn't fit in the conventional way -- in particular it was a bit weird to use it after Bjorn (don't know what kind you have now) because it doesn't slot in the way Bjorn does and feels curiously un-anchored. As long as it's on the toilet, though, the nonslip surface on the bottom should keep it from sliding around. (Although it's possible you may have a really small toilet? I've only run into one or two toilets that it really didn't fit, both because they were too small.) It was my friend who recced it, so if you see her again you might ask her about it.

Good luck with the training! Glad it's going well. Yeah, I think it's a lot easier to split it -- I figure she'll figure out the nighttime part eventually...

[thistleingrey]

Ha. I can see how that'd be inconvenient or even irritating at times, but it's also cute. Though Reason won't let us help her gather the remainder of her food in a bowl, sometimes, singing so far is free.

Hmm, I would think that that'd be enough, but who knows how specifically comfort zones are structured. The more-people-present thing seems more likely, then. And for Reason, the greeter thing is endearing, but I am hoping that she doesn't get a fat head next year, when she'll be eldest girl (and only a week or two younger than the eldest boy); this school-year there was a three-month-older girl whom Reason followed around and mimicked, which was great for built-in reminders to her that when people praised her, there was still someone faster and more comfortable with speaking: a counterweight to her confidence. (That girl is skipping a year in order to be with the kids who'll eventually be her kindergarten classmates--August birthday.) There's other ways to balance things, anyway.

Thanks for the good wishes! We have the shorter of the two Björn heights (because I bought it before realizing I had a tallish kid), and we're currently using it at floor height because the idea of sitting on anything higher freaks her out, for now. This afternoon she decided twice that she wanted to try sitting on the travel seat, but then came down (with help) and sat on the Bjorn. I suspect that wanting to do things like an adult will ease a subsequent transition.... Since training at home and training re: foreign toilets seem also to be relatively distinct--if you're willing to say, what did you guys do for out-of-house toilets and longer car rides at first? (I think you're the most recent of friends I could ask who've gone through this, especially with a girl--some friends with older kids haven't begun or are in a protracted several-week struggle.)

[cahn]

Hm. I don't think I shall be enormously helpful, because what we actually did was try not to use out-of-house toilets, and do intensive out-of-house training before we had to take a longer car ride. This was aided by E, after a couple of weeks, being able to use the toilet on demand, so we'd just tell her to use the potty right before going somewhere and we'd usually be good to go. She was able to signal when she wanted to go, so a couple of times we did try to use out-of-house potties with bad results (she hated it, wet her pants), so... take lots of extra changes?

When we did the out-of-toilet training, it was pretty much like a second round of in-house toilet training -- giving her water to drink, going to the toilet every fifteen minutes, waiting for a while to see if anything happened, rinse and repeat until something did happen. I actually took her to work with me (weekends and early hours before anyone showed up) because that was a venue we could just sit around and not worry that other people would have to use it or be annoyed there was a small child sitting there for an hour.

My friend K, the one you met, I believe did it all at the same time -- trained with, at least, the toilets she was likely to encounter in the course of her weekly classes/etc., and this seems like it worked really well for her -- meant she only had to do it once. I suspect starting out Reason with several different toilets (once you transition her; E was so tall by the time we started that we never did the free-standing potty at all) to begin with is probably the easiest way to do it. (K would probably be a good resource in general for this, since her kid trained at about the same age Reason is -- E was about six months older, I think.)

[thistleingrey]

I was waiting to reply because things kept changing each day, and then I waited sort of too long. Oops. We haven't used any out-of-house toilets aside from daycare yet despite the logic of doing it all at once, mostly because it hasn't been needed; this Saturday will be the first definite time (with a 2h drive each way), so it'll be interesting. But we're still mostly in pullups because daycare prefers them--cloth only at home and if she asks. When Reason can go two weeks without mishap, I'll switch. Certainly I'd like to stop buying landfill!!

At daycare she sits on a Björn-like seat, so I tried the Björn at home for a few days. It eventually made her cry for some reason (crying like no, no, would rather curl up on the floor than touch that seat), so we're back to the little potty she can reach on her own. DIY fierceness, oy. She's become pretty good at pulling down her long=outer pants and little pants, whether cotton or pullup, due to this wish not to have to be assisted. And she's become used to aiming into the little potty despite being a bit too tall (though obviously she's not as tall now as E was, given the age disparity alone).

Taking E to your work sounds like a great idea. Students will be inundating the vicinity of mine very soon, so I'll have to try to think of something--maybe a larger local library where there's more than one stall.

K and I talked a bit during playdate #2 the other day, helpfully, though I'm realizing that toilet training is rather like early non-liquid food: every kid (and parent) really ends up doing it differently. Ironically, Reason's toilet use has interested the other daycare kids, so I've already begun sharing what's worked so far for Reason + logical-sounding bits from you and other friends with another mother, in case her similarly aged child asks to use the toilet....

[cahn]

I was waiting to reply because things kept changing each day

I know how that is :)

We had good luck with the closer and smaller of the two libraries near our house -- it's large enough that it has a two-stall bathroom and (and i didn't know this until I started taking her there for toilet training!) even a kid's toilet -- but low-volume enough that people weren't constantly coming in and out of the bathroom and it was okay to sit there for... quite a while. The larger library is also in a more urban location and has a lot more people, and I think E got spooked by the constantly flushing toilets and the loud air-blower hand dryers (though these same features made this library a good training ground for the last intensive step of toilet training -- once she could go there, she could go anywhere :) )

every kid (and parent) really ends up doing it differently.

...yeah. (That's why my original advice to you in your post was riddled with so many caveats and YMMV's :) )

[ecaterin]

I'd always wondered how childcare providers managed large numbers of children because I was kept busy with keeping up with just the one, and now I know: they don't have large numbers of kids like E -- all the other parents were chatting in the secure knowledge that their kids were mostly hanging out in the same area, whereas I was continually having to chase after E.

Bwaaaa ha ha ha ha ha!!! My oldest was like this (he's almost 15yo) - ultimately he's the one responsible for the fact that I teach Positive Discipline, because I needed 99 strategies to help him for every 5 strategies I need to help *other* parents :D

Let me tell you though - everyone jokes that at least your child-with-a-will-of-adamant will not succumb to peer pressure in adolescence, right? Well it's completely true :P Dakota does what he thinks is right and doesn't give a damn about what his peers think - and since for the most part he's got his head screwed on straight from years of careful emotional intelligence teaching....this works out well :D So hang in there!

[cahn]

Oh wow, it's awesome to know someone else had this same issue!

So as not to malign E, I should also say that in general (when she's not tantrumming because MUST DO MYSELF) she is extremely calm, mild-mannered, good-tempered, and patient, and has been ever since she was born (she also clearly gets this from her dad), and she's really probably less work than most, if not all, other kids her age. It's just that -- well, even a toddler who's relatively less work is work, and she doesn't scale -- N of her would be pretty much N times as much work. Whereas her little friend who comes over sometimes? It's about equally as much work taking care of him alone as it is taking care of him and her, because he basically follows her around. (Talking of peer pressure... that kid is going to be SO susceptible to it...)

I looked up Positive Discipline -- surprised I hadn't heard of it -- it sounds awesome, and, heh, not so different (though of course much more thought-out) from the parenting philosophy I've assembled in dribbles trying to keep up with E., as well as my bad experiences with a punitive-parenting method and my knowledge I couldn't do a relative's permissive-parenting method. (Both I and my relative's kids seem to be turning out okay, mind you, but it seems like such a lot of work to get there, and I'm all about minimizing the integrated work :) ) Thanks! I do joke that she's my comeuppance in assuming books know what they're talking about -- because she tends to defy quite a lot of what our more-traditional books say.

And yes, I've been hoping this will mean peer pressure won't be so much of a thing, and extremely pleased to find it was the case for your son. Here's to hoping :)

[ecaterin]

LOL - YES. I remember getting together with some of my online mom-friends when our kids were around 18 months old. I hardly got to talk to any of them cause Dakota kept making a beeline for the boundaries of the park just as he always did, at a dead run. Over and over and over. Later back online people were like, Ya know how she jokes her son is worth about 4 toddlers combined? SHE WASN'T KIDDING :P

Yeah, Positive Discipline/Positive Parenting is the natural segue from attachment parenting, and both are conceptually intuitive - though actual practice often really REALLY requires research and teaching :D It's one thing to say, "I'll never spank/shame/use fear/manipulate because that's clearly a stupid approach since adults who treat eachother that way are considered abusive...plus it won't result in an ongoing relationship that works for adolescence, nor will it prepare my child to be an emotionally healthy adult which is the whole freakin' goal, isn't it?????" and quite another thing to actually maintain your sanity while setting healthy boundaries and limits that are developmentally appropriate for your kiddo! It's enough to make your head explode, cause it's not like they slow down their developmental foibles while you're trying to figure out how the hell to manage them without doing what your parents did or what conventional culture does! Nooo, they don't :D

I love teaching (currently I have exactly one phone client....how did that happen? :D). It's fantastic to help a parent be able to ENJOY their kid again :D Helping parents who *want* to parent without using fear or emotional manipulation? I figure that's one of the most profound changes I can bring to the planet :) ....well, after parenting my own children, at any rate!

There's TONS of books out there that purport to be PD - most of them are fairly lame and fall into two categories: "Punishment Light," and, "Emotional Manipulation by Another Name." Barbara Coloroso's books tend to be excellent. I've heard good things about the author Dr. Gordon Neufeld (people often assume I'm working from his model - in actuality at the point I was developing my model, we had crap for resources, so a group of us alternative parents hammered out our own version). Because it's a philosophy rather than a set of gimmics and because it has its roots in emotional intelligence which is based in the structure of human social psychology rather than an abstract set of concepts, PD is pretty much infinitely flexible. It can be applied to any parent/child relationship and there's *always* a way to help a child be emotionally capable and socially appropriate, within the restrictions of that child's developmental stage.

One thing that's really lacking is resources that help parents whose child is in the transitional age range from 2.5yo to about 7yo. That's the most critical time to really teach emotional intelligence and establish healthy boundaries, and by far the hardest time to parent - but because you can't use reason as your main tool with the child, books kind of flail about, gloss over that age range, and focus on parenting from about 6-7yo on. Because of that, I've ended up informally specializing in that age group. People contact me when their child hits about 3.5 and they realize that they don't *like* their kid right now....and really need to do something about that. Once you get your child to about 7yo while using positive discipline, things get soooo much easier, because you've got an in-tune relationship already firmly established....but getting from toddlerhood to there, that's hard! Anyhoo, I've got some articles on my site if you have any interest in reading more From The Mind Of Ecaterin on the subject :P http://c-3.nu/howtoparent/

:D

[cahn]

Positive Discipline/Positive Parenting is the natural segue from attachment parenting

I must confess I didn't do attachment parenting (or even really look into it once it became clear E wasn't into it, so apologies if I misconstrue it) at all -- I might have done more than I actually did do, if it weren't that E was a kid who didn't take to it at all. She didn't particularly want to be held, she really wanted to eat solid food (so she weaned relatively early, less than 1.5 years), she loved her stroller way more than she liked being carried, etc. I told you she defied all the books! :) (We did phase the stroller out as soon as she could walk, because I placed a high premium on her being an independent walker.)

It's one thing to say, "I'll never spank/shame/use fear/manipulate because that's clearly a stupid approach since adults who treat eachother that way are considered abusive...plus it won't result in an ongoing relationship that works for adolescence, nor will it prepare my child to be an emotionally healthy adult which is the whole freakin' goal, isn't it?????" and quite another thing to actually maintain your sanity while setting healthy boundaries and limits that are developmentally appropriate for your kiddo!

OMG YES. The relative I mentioned before had a punitive parent, hated it, and swore she wouldn't do it with her kids -- but her permissive techniques led to kids who just... there's no way I could have put up with what she put up with. I have no idea how she stayed sane. They're turning into kind of awesome pre-teens, actually, but I would have gone insane while getting there.

As I said, E is usually a really good kid, but man, have there ever been moments where I understood why my mom did a punitive-parenting method -- and she was a full-time mom with very little support from my dad, who worked very long hours at the time, with two kids at least one of whom was not nearly as easy a child as E -- it's waaaaay easier to use fear or shame in the moment itself, you know?

"Emotional Manipulation by Another Name."

...I'm so glad you said this, because I sometimes felt that way when reading these kinds of books -- "man, this would bother me if my mom said this to me --" and I'm glad to know that it wasn't just me being over-sensitive :) (The idea of telling your kid that something will make you sad if s/he doesn't do it... WHAT. Though I must admit to using this technique when E decided I should not eat in front of her. Yes, she is a control freak. I now tell her, when she is all "Mommy no eat!" that when Mommy doesn't eat she gets "sad and cranky" -- although I assert this is a natural consequence of Mommy not eating rather than emotional manipulation ;) )

(I, uh, am a big fan of natural consequences, since after all the kid's going to be facing natural consequences for the rest of her life. My philosophy is something like -- except for things that are clearly unsafe, like running out in the street, and there are relatively few things like that -- there's nothing that's wrong or forbidden, but there are things that will invite natural consequences that you may not like very much, like being forced to clean up all the toys you just dumped on the floor now that you want to play with something else. And that part of my job as a parent is to facilitate her introduction to natural consequences while allowing her to take progressively more responsibility.

Interestingly, my mom thinks I'm being way too lenient AND way too strict, depending on what aspect she's critiquing, which is kind of hilarious to me. When she's not pushing my buttons, anyway.)

One thing that's really lacking is resources that help parents whose child is in the transitional age range from 2.5yo to about 7yo.

YES THIS. I've read all these books about reasoning with and negotiating with one's kid... but YOU CAN'T REASON WITH A TWO-YEAR OLD like you would with an adult. And though you can negotiate with a two-year-old, and I do, it's NOT like negotiating with an adult, or even like negotiating with a child who's old enough to reason with, like you say on your site.

People contact me when their child hits about 3.5 and they realize that they don't *like* their kid right now....and really need to do something about that.

So I haven't gotten there yet with E, who is right now actually kind of lovely when she's not throwing a tantrum or coming out of her room for the twentieth time at night. She's at the age where she really wants to help out, and the consequences we implemented when she was about 2 have started to pay off (e.g., she's willing to clean up her toys now, which she wasn't at 2).

BUT. I don't know if you looked at any of my previous posts at all, but I'm also teaching four-year-old boys at church, and learning about your PD work could not have come at a more opportune time. One of the kids is having a lot of problems with temper. Of course, seeing him for two hours a week, and not having any real authority, there's only so much I can do, but. Articles gave me a lot of food for thought there -- thanks so much for the link!

Have you seen msagara's posts about her son? She seems to have come to many of the same conclusions you talk about, independently and through being a SF writer (although she mostly talks about age 5 and up).