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Q: My 2 ½-year-old
son has been completely potty trained since 23 months. However, recently, he
has started peeing and popping in his pants. We stayed the course for a few
months, but the accidents kept getting more frequent. Plus, his temper tantrums
about using the potty became terrible. We put him back in pull-ups, and now he
goes in his pull-ups all the time. I think we’ve set a very bad precedent by
reverting to pull-ups, but I’m at a loss at how to start over.
A: It’s time to go cold turkey on the pull-ups. By that I
mean, take every pull-up out of the house and throw them away immediately. Then
begin his toilet-training rehabilitation. Pump him full of liquids and give him
a high fiber diet to get things moving along. Then put him in the bathroom with
a few toys and some books, and tell him he can come out after he uses the
potty. Once he’s had success, he can play until the potty bell dings (set a
kitchen timer to go off every hour at least, during which time you’re making
sure he’s drinking lots of water).
When the bell dings, it’s back to the bathroom again until
he uses the potty properly. Any “on-purposes” outside of the bathroom ensure a
return to the bathroom. Don’t let his temper tantrums derail you. Things will
likely get worse before they get better, so stay the course.
One other note: All four of my children had one “relapse”
period months after being fully potty-trained. In my opinion, the child becomes
more involved in what she’s doing to be bothered with going to the bathroom in
time to avoid “on purposes.”
To solve the problem, I simply told the child to go to the
bathroom when I saw the dance, leveling consequences when she refused. If the
child had an “on-purpose,” I confined her to her room for the rest of the day
and straight to bed after an early dinner. A few days of that cured the
problem, and she’ll be back to using the potty again on his own.
Do you have a
parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah
through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.
I’m a terrible mother.
Before you call social services and report me, no, I don’t
beat or starve my children, but there are days when I fall way short of today’s
definition of a good mother. I don’t spend a lot of time with my children (and
often think that’s okay). I don’t correct their homework (and have no intention
of doing so). At times, I get annoyed when they interrupt me. I sometimes yell
at them when they frustrate me (like spilling milk on the table I just
cleaned).
How many times have I not paid attention to what a child was
saying because my attention was on my email? How many times do I pack my day
with too much work and end up too tired to play a game or read a story to them
before bed?
We as mothers and women have a tendency to set the bar so
high, it’s nigh on impossible to reach. We tell ourselves that if we don’t bake
the cookies from scratch, or don’t pay close enough attention to the babblings
of the 2-year-old, or don’t fill-in-the-blank, our children will not be happy,
healthy, or have a good life.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But how many of us have had
similar thoughts dance through our minds, along with the accompanying guilt at
not being a good enough mother? I sure have, even though I try very hard not
to.
Then there’s the inevitable comparisons with other mothers.
Even when we’re not consciously thinking about how other women parent, it can
seep into our minds in the blink of an eye.
Here’s an example of what I mean: When my oldest was a
toddler, we went to the park on one of the first warm spring days. She had on a
short-sleeved shirt probably for the first time that year. As we walked to the
playground, I looked around at the other mothers who were arriving with their
children. Nearly every one of them had whipped out a tube of sunscreen and was
slathering their child’s face and arms with the stuff. My daughter looked at me
and asked if she needed sunscreen. I told her no and to go play, but in that
moment, I felt like a bad mother, one who sends her defenseless child out into
the sunny world with no sunscreen.
Other times this feeling has cropped up for me includes
being the mom without the first aid kit at the playground and another mom has
to lend you a Band-aid to bandage your child’s bloody knee. Or giving my kids a
non-organic, not-too-healthy snack when other moms have artfully arranged
carrot sticks and hummus.
If we fall into this mindset that we are not good enough
mothers, that our parenting styles and family life is not up to par with the
rest of the world—and as a result our children will not be able to fulfill
their great destinies— then we will miss out on a lot of the joys of childhood.
We also will miss out on the laughter and the pain, the joys
and the sorrows, the average grades and the missed goals. And those lessons
learned from not being perfect, from seeing how we as mothers handle life’s
disappointments, and from enjoying life to its fullest whatever our
circumstances, are priceless.
It’s not being the perfect mother that our children will
love us for—it’s being the best mother we can be for them. That won’t look good
some days, but if we turn our backs on measuring ourselves to an impossible
standard, we can have more good days than bad.
It took me several years to come to terms that I wasn’t a
great mother by certain standards. And there are times when I slip and start to
obsess about how I’m not a good mother. But most of the time, I aim to be a
good enough mother, and so far, it’s been a good one for my four children.
Until next time,
Sarah
This week of Thanksgiving, I'm taking time off from my blog to enjoy some time with my family. I hope you will take time to think about the things that matter most this holiday--family and friends.
For ideas on how to have a thankful heart, read my article " Thankfulness for Thanksgiving," published last year on Crosswalk.com. It's a message we all need, especially this time of year.
Until next time,
Sarah
Q: We sold our house
a few weeks ago, and since then, our three-year-old has been crying a lot at
preschool, which she attends three days a week. This is a change from the first
of the year, when she shed a few tears at drop off. Now she cries as soon as we
leave the house and doesn’t stop. She’s been telling the teacher that she has
to throw up or needs to go potty, and ends up spending a significant amount of
time in the restroom. Her behavior is disrupting the class.
We’ve tried to be
supportive of her during this time. Our doctor said she was experiencing
anxiety from having to move. How should we handle this?
A: It sounds like you’ve been a bit too supportive. When
your daughter is calm, tell her that you will be taking a new approach to her
crying over the house being sold. Say she has 10 minutes in which to express
her feelings on the matter. Set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes and let her cry,
fuss or whatever for that time period. Then tell her that the matter is closed.
When she cries excessively (anything over a couple of minutes) at preschool, ask
the teachers to call you and you’ll come get her. Once back home, she goes to
her room (striped of play value) for the rest of the day. If she cries at home,
send her to her room or a special “crying place,” such as the powder room.
Your daughter has figured out, inadvertently, that her
crying gets her lots of attention. The more she cries, the more upset and
anxious and solicitous the adults around her get. In other words, she’s become
addicted to the attention and so she cries for long periods of time to get the
attention she’s craving.
As with all temper tantrums, she’s the only one who can end
the cycle. But she needs help to do so. Start by treating any tears from her
without emotion to avoid validating her tears. Simply point her to her crying
place for her to go to get control of herself. When she’s stopped crying, she
can come out. Above all, don’t ask her why she’s crying—at this point, she very
likely can’t remember or doesn’t know. It’s become a habit and like with all
habits, it can be broken with consistent, unemotional support from you. This
will likely take a few days or a week, but by treating her tears as something
she can control, you will help her get over this hump.
Do you have a
parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah
through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.
Sometimes, you read an advice column that makes you wonder
if they really mean what they said. That happened to me last week when I read a
parenting advice column in my local newspaper. The reader question involved the
behavior of four-year-old twin girls. One girl is sweet and good-natured, while
the other one has daily meltdowns. The reader wanted to know the best way to
handle the temper tantrums when the one child didn’t get her way.
The answer, from a parenting expert who has been dishing out
advice for years now, started out on the right foot, with recommending that the
mother stop whacking the child with a belt to the legs whenever the child had a
meltdown. But then the expert veered off into psychobabble territory by telling
the mother that the child probably has “one of those hard-to-spot physical
problems that make children’s behavior go haywire.”
The expert went on to send the mother on a wild goose chase
to see what component of the child’s diet might be triggering these meltdowns.
Is she hypoglycemic? Lactose intolerant? Allergic to foods with salicylates? While
the mother rushes around trying to figure out what foods could be causing her
child’s outbursts, the child morphs into a victim of her diet and her tantrums
continue unabated.
What the expert doesn’t seem to grasp is that nothing causes
children to misbehave—they are wired that way from birth, like all of us. Part
of our jobs as parents is to force the child to see the errors of his ways and reform
the little criminals into responsible citizens of the family and community.
By repurposing this child’s behavior into something she is
not responsible for--if it’s caused by what she eats, then changing her diet
should fix her tantrums. Unfortunately, the mother will find that even if she
tries all these different diets, her daughter’s outbursts will continue and
probably get worse.
I would have advised the mother to designate a special
tantrum place in the house, such as an unused room (like a guest bedroom) or
downstairs powder room. When the girl started to have a meltdown, simply direct
her (with a helping hand, if needed) to the tantrum room and tell her to have
her tantrum there. When she’s finished, she can come out. It will probably get
worse before it gets better, but consistent and unemotional application of
removing the child from the center of attention to a place where nobody’s
watching her tantrum will cure her of her meltdowns. While she will still have
them occasionally—because some children seem more prone to those than others—she
will gain mastery of herself and the mother will have a more peaceful house.
This year, all four of my children are in school,
albeit not all full-time (my youngest is in a three-day preschool
program). Whenever this comes up in conversation, the enviable response is,
“What will you do with all of your free time?”
Ah, free time—that mythical land to which every mother longs
to go. As someone who currently works part-time from home, I rarely had free time before this school year began. My life really hasn't changed much since the children are in school, although I do get errands done a bit quicker.
I think the bigger question is what does this say about the
current view of mothering. My mother stayed at home, but her time wasn’t
consumed by doing for—or entertaining—me. Sure, household chores ate up some
time, but once we were older than three, time spent in childcare dropped
considerably for women of my mother’s generation.
That kind of mothering has fallen out of favor, and with it
the rise of no time, free or otherwise. I am grateful for my mother’s example,
for it gives me the fortitude to follow in her footsteps. Direct care of my
children has lessened as they age; correspondingly, time I spend taking care of
the household has also dropped as the children have picked up more of the
cleaning chores.
In turn, that has allowed me to pick up some of the things
that I put on hold when the children first arrived: reading, writing, knitting
and sewing, for example.
I’m enjoying a quieter house, and I have plenty with which to fill my suddenly “free time” since my time has
always been mine to fill. I’ll take the 24 hours given to us each day and try
to use it wisely, like I've always done.
Until next time,
Sarah
Q: I think our 12-year-old
son may be jealous over a girl classmate’s desire to be around one of his
friends. In the classroom, she wants to be his partner or in the group with my
son’s friend. I don't think my son “likes” her because he finds girls very
annoying right now, and his behavior supports it.
On the playground,
she wants to play football with the boys, but ends up standing in the middle
and doing nothing. The playground teacher makes the boys throw every third pass
to the two girls, while there can be 15 boys. My son threw a football to a
friend, whose fingertips it went off and hit the girl in the face. We were told
our son said, “That’s what happens to ugly girls.” Later, our son told us that
he didn’t say that, only that he thought of her as a “teacher’s pet.”
I meet with her
parents, teacher, and children tomorrow at school, probably with the principal
and school counselor, too. What can I do to help our son? I want to be
supportive, of course, to our son, even if he's made some unwise choices. I
want to give him some tools to deal with others’ comments about himself. He's
dyslexic, so there's a confidence issue with schooling.
A. My initial thought is this is building a mountain out of
molehill, but I suspect you probably didn't have a choice in regard to school meeting.
Whether or not your son likes the girl is not relevant to this situation. Likewise
is the fact that he may or may not be jealous.
Those are clouding the issue and should be avoided because
the “why” something happened is not nearly as important as the “what” happened.
This is contrary to a lot of talk today by professionals, so be prepared to
stick to the “what happened” in the meeting and steer away as much as possible
from the “why did this happen” discussion (and it's near cousin, the why did he
do that or why did she react that way).
The best way you can help your son is to ensure he takes
responsibility for his actions. He hit the girl with the football and said
something not nice to her (true or not, others think he did, so he should own
it. Yes, it's not fair, but frankly, it's how life is sometimes).
Come up with what you would have him do to make amends. I’d
recommend a verbal apology to the girl, plus having him hand-write in legible
script a longer, formal letter of apology to the girl. Bring the letter to the
meeting. If this is an out-of-the-blue type of situation, that might be enough
of a consequence, as he’s likely to be extremely embarrassed by having to do
those two apologies.
If you think this might be a pattern, then level home
consequences for his actions, too, i.e., some sort of meaningful restriction,
like removing electronics and/or limiting his interaction with the outside
world for a time--in other words, make it matter a whole lot to him, not
something token. Implement said restriction immediately.
In the near future (once this has had a few days to settle
down), you can talk with him in brief spurts (or have your husband do so) about
walking away from situations where he feels his self control loosening, about
counting to 30 in his head, about replacing mean thoughts about a person with
positive or affirming ones, etc. I have a daughter who I work with on occasion
on this issue, as she tends to flare up like a tornado when she's frustrated,
and it does help to remind her what to do when she feels that way--but only
when she's not feeling that way. Avoid over-lecturing, though. Say what you
want to say in as few words as possible, then stop talking:) That will sink in
more than a long discussion.
One final thought: his dyslexia has nothing to do with his
actions, so I'd keep that out of the discussion here as it will only muddy the
waters.
Do you have a
parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah
through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.
There’s a game I played often as a child called Russia Ball.
You could play by yourself or with friends. The basic game followed a set of 10
tasks, such as throwing up the ball and clapping three times before catching
it, that the player completed in order. You added an extra bounce with each of
the tasks to make it harder.
For Russia Ball, adding bounces of the ball to the various
tasks often resulted in wild misses and gales of laughter. In our own lives, we
sometimes add too much and the resulting mess is nothing at which to laugh.
At the end of the day, I often wonder how so many things
conspired to go wrong or at least not the way I had planned. Most times, I can
trace it back to my making things unnecessarily complicated. Kind of like
adding to many bounces to the Russia
Ball game when you should just stick to the basics.
A recent Monday was a prime example of that. I had my lengthy to-do
list for the day and knew what I thought I needed to accomplish. Then one of my
daughters needed to go to the doctor, and we all know what a big chunk of the
day that will take. In my case, it took two hours plus: travel to and from
doctor’s office, wait time at doctor’s office, office visit with doctor, wait
for prescription from doctor, delivery of child to school and chat with school
nurse about medication, and stop by pharmacy to pick up prescription. Oh, and
did I mention I’d have to go back to the pharmacy tomorrow because the cream
was not in stock? Add to that Monday’s early dismissal from school, plus piano
lessons afterschool, and my available time for “my” tasks just shrunk in half.
But on that Monday, I managed to remember about halfway through
the day that this is what God wanted for me this day. These hassles were what I
needed today, that I needed more than performing my “Russia Ball” list of
things. And Monday turned out to be a better day than it could have been if I
had let myself stay in the frustration that had enveloped me early on.
Does it always turn out as well as my Monday ended up? For
me, no! I fail more than I succeed in remembering that complications are often
my own doing and if I would submit more to God, I would have less of the
frustrations and more of the peace.
As I hear my girls laughing and the slap, slap of the ball
as they play Russia Ball, I remind myself once again of the joys of less
complicated life.
If you want directions for playing Russia Ball, send me an
email through the contact page form.
Until next time,
Sarah
Q: My daughter receives extra credit for bringing in Campbell’s
Soup labels. I sent her to school with two in a bag but found the bag later on
with the labels still inside. She showed me her extra credit pass, so I know
her teacher gave her credit. But I also know she couldn’t have turned in the
labels she swore she took to school. I sent her to her room until she tells me
the truth and confesses to her teacher. Did I do the right thing?
A: All children lie
at one time or another. The best way to help your children not to lie is to
avoid asking them questions to which you know the answer. To wit, you knew she
had not taking the extra credit paper to school. Therefore, act accordingly.
Don’t give her a
chance to lie by asking her about the labels, just proceed as if she had told
you the truth. She didn’t turn in the labels, and so her extra credit was not
received legitimately. Now you must decide on a punishment, which I would make
sure invokes the Agony Principle (parents should not agonize over anything a
child does or fails to do if the child his perfectly capable of agonizing over
it herself, from John Rosemond’s The
Well-Behaved Child) ”
Her punishment should
include a handwritten note of apology to her teacher. And tell her that you’ll
follow up with her teacher to make sure she receives it. My article “Why
Do Children Lie?” explores lying and kids in more detail.
Do you have a
parenting question you would like to see answered on this blog? Email Sarah
through the contact page with Parenting Question in the subject line.
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