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

[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).