The use of imagination and thinking outside of the box is the best tool I have for parenting this motley crew. I take what I learn from others, then spin it to fit my boys. it is trial and error most of the time, but I feel so happy when I stumble across something that really works.
Today, I think I stumbled into a real genius move. (That is definitely tempting the fates so I figure by tomorrow I will be eyeball deep in bodily waste and begging the Reality Fairy for forgiveness)
One small boy has many nervous habits. Shredding his food, picking his nose until it bleeds, putting his hands in his pants, just to name a few. This child will be heading off to kindergarten in the fall, and I know that a child walking around with both hands stuffed into his underwear all the time is not going to fly. I have reminded him constantly (he seems completely unaware that he is doing it) told him I would tape his pants to his shirt (never did, but did seriously consider it) put a diaper on under his underwear so his hands didn't just slip in there, and talked, talked, talked to him about how it will affect him outside of our home. None of this made any difference. None at all. I was bracing myself for daily calls from the school and my child getting labeled by his peers as a pervert.
And then, as I was cleaning out the winter clothes, I saw it. Lightbulb moment. Overalls. I almost let out a little hysterical giggle. Overalls, he can't get his hands into his underwear without some serious contortions. No mindless hands-in-pants nervous habit. He can still get them on and off for pottying. Unfortunately I only have one pair so if they work, I will be heading to the Osh Kosh outlet store and stocking up. Once we break the habit he should be fine from then on. Today is Day 1 of the great overalls experiment.
Ugh, I just looked over and although he is so adorable in the overalls, he has a bloody nose. One step at a time.
That reminds me of something the therapist asked me. He wanted me to make a list of the top 5 things I wanted to work on for this child. Then we would systematically address one at a time. That list was incredibly hard. There were so many annoying, poor behaviors to choose from! On any given day, it could be any of a large number of behaviors that might be the most annoying. Can you pick the top 5 things you would want to fix? Let me know what they are. I am interested to see......
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5 comments:
How was he when he needed to use the bathroom?
Fine. I showed him how to work the straps and he was able to do it himself. I kept telling him how cute he was and he really liked them!
top 5 things at my house to fix:
1. out of blue lashing out (yesterday I was kicked, today he cut a classmate with scissors- for NO reason).
2. whining
3. "I don't know"
4. sleeping in my bed- that would be the little man sleeping in my bed
5. needing my complete attention all the time, every single day, no matter what.
This was semi hard, but we are at a low point again, or at least on the downward cycle. School is ending, my work is ramping up and I am trying to juggle too many things.
Love to you,
Deb
1) Ange out of mommy's bed
2) Ango stop teasing sister 24/7
3) BOTH stop interupting... (mom, mom, mom, mom, non stop when you are talking to someone else)
4) BOTH When mom is on the phone it isn't a free ticket to go wild
5) NO MORE DIAPERS AT NIGHT
to only name a few... Since I have 2 kids, can I give you 10 things? LOL...
HUGS
I highly recommend the one-thing-at-a-time approach. It is HARD for the parents because EVERYTHING bugs you and you are used to addressing it all. In our experience, once we started focussing on one thing at a time and proceeding sequentially, our kids heard a lot less from us that they could perceive a criticism or criticalness or their inability to meet our expectations. It was really hard for us to stop mentioning and just focus on one thing, but we were able to gut it out -- with reminders to each other to "stay on goal." Our top five list back when we were in this stage of attachment-fostering were: eye contact; interrupting; doing what asked at time asked (not detouring into another activity); nonsense chatter; eating/manners/table conduct stuff. We found it very productive to pick one and focus on it for as long as it seemed to need to get the job done. In the background, we continued doing all the attachment stuff such as rocking/holding time, baby time, tapping, etc.
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