Conference moira::parenting_v3

    This is my knee-jerk response to a few of your concerns, a lot of it
    the "conventional wisdom" which you may have tried and rejected.
    
    > waking up 2 - 3 times in the middle of the 
    > night complaining about monsters,tigers,bugs
    
    Have you tried "monster spray" (air freshener or whatever) to quell his
    fears?
    
    > I can't get him dressed without physical force.
    
    I used to give Alex a choice of dressing herself or "making me dress
    you like a baby."  But that might backfire, I guess--it could seem 
    attractive to Matt (though he does get a lot of attention, maybe he 
    wants ALL the attention, and the same kind that the baby gets).  You
    could also take him to daycare in his PJs and either let the daycare
    provider change him later, or let him live in PJs (for weeks...!) til 
    he gets bored with that ploy.
    
    > we say no since he hasn't eaten dinner.  
    
    Good for you!  You've established the rule... now,
    
    > Of course he doesn't understand this
    
    I bet he doesn't LIKE this.  I also bet he UNDERSTANDS it just fine. 
    Hold that line!  "First dinner, THEN <treat>.  No dinner, no <treat>." 
    If he opts for no dinner, then establish what he CAN have between
    dinner and the next meal (crusts and water!  :-D ) and stick to it.
    
    > Wont' take baths anymore - used to love these, too.
    
    Get him by surprise--take him in the shower with you.  He may love it,
    which would solve the washing-up problem; he may hate it, which may
    reverse his reticence about the baths.  [Rathole: entered in Bruce
    Collier's absence!]
    
    > We also have a 45 minute drive each way and I listen to "Let me out",
    > "No JoAnn's house", or ranting about other stupid things.
    
    ARGH!  Alexandra pulled an all-out tantrum one time on the way home
    from daycare, so shrill that my eyes were rolling around in their
    sockets.  I pulled in to a parking lot, shut everything off, told her I
    wasn't doing ANYTHING til she "got it together."  I rolled down the 
    window and stared outside while she ranted.  SEVERAL minutes passed,
    and I thought she might be winding down a bit, so I turned and asked
    (very icily!) "Are you almost finished?"  She stopped cold, said
    "Almost," in a very rational voice, and then proceeded to shriek again
    for about a minute!!  Then she was finished, and we went home... my
    ignoring her in the parking lot may not have cut down on total tantrum
    time, but it taught me a lot: she had maxed out, and she NEEDED to
    pitch a fit, and I didn't need to drive while it was happening, and she
    even seemed relieved that she could get it over with without added
    pressure from me.
    
    Finally,
    
    > WE can't lock him in since he pounds the door.
    
    Does the pounding wake the baby?  If not, Woolner the Heartless (that's
    me) would say "pound away, apparently you need the exercise, but it's
    not going to get you OUT.  I hope you don't hurt your hands."  Of
    course this is assuming that his room has been toddlerproofed to your
    exacting standards and that you are doing surreptitious listening at
    least every 5 minutes.  He might tire himself out enough to sleep
    through some of the monster/tiger/bug attacks!
    
    Leslie 

There are several notes, Lorain, that deal with this type of problem.
I don't have time for a thorough search, but I did some DIR/TITLE=
and came up with 75 ("Defiant Three Year Old") and 884 ("Is this
the 'terrible/trying' twos?").

I sympathize with your problems, Lorain.  At various times we have gone 
through things like this with Evan, who will shortly be 3 1/2.  After our
initial response (which may be frustration or anger) we try to ask ourselves,
"How can we get what we want and give him power, too?" or "How can we give
him power in general?".  What we have found is that when he is acting up
in more than one area, it seems that he has been feeling pushed around a lot.
We parents constantly are telling them what to do, when to do it, and that
they are going to like it.  :-)  So we try to find things that will help *him*:
giving him more warning when we want him to do something, taking him to daycare
in his PJ's if he really didn't want to get dressed (that only had to happen
once; he has never chosen it since), letting him eat a token amount of cookie
dough with dinner (amazingly, he eats that first, then devours the rest of
his dinner, and doesn't ask for more cookie dough), and, the most common lately,
I find that I allow him to play the monster/parent/power_person more often
when he is upset, as this allows him a safe way to get out his aggressions on
me. Usually the game involves him tickling me, though last night it was giving 
me an imaginary shower;I was playing a cat, and he learned from this that
cats don't like water.  :-)  Typically, doing something like this makes him 
very pliable afterwards.  The game is the quickest way to get the results 
I want.  The others take repetitions.  It takes an effort for me to remind 
myself that I have to give him 2-5 minute warnings, but it pays off.  Often
he will do what I want before I even tell him that the time is up, because
he just needed a little power, not all 2 minutes more of Mr. Rogers.

My basic rule of thumb for this is to first decide what is really important
to me (do I want him to go to daycare NOW, or can it wait 2 minutes?) and
then allow us both to "win".

  FWIW (and good luck!),

     Carol

Oh, notes 488 ("Smart-alecky 2.5 yr. old") and 533 ("2.5 yr old refusing meals")
may help also.

      Carol

Your son has a soul sister named Katelyn.  She goes through all of what you
describe, though (knock on wood) not all at the same time.  My best approach
to (1) understand it, and (2) deal with the parts I can, has been from the
book "Your Two Year Old" by Ames.  She writes a book for each age, through
teenage, and I find myself thinking "Yup, that's Kati.  I wonder if she
did her research at my daycare!"  She mentions phases of emotional equilibrium
and dis-equilibrium, and 2.5 is the latter.  She also tries to explain how
they are feeling and what they are thinking, to help you understand what your
child is actually going through.  Just knowing this helped me.

FWIW

    
    Lorain,
    
    Your basenote reminded me of a string of notes entered last winter
    by Kate Nelson about her then 2.5 year old son, James.  Your tone
    (i.e. "at the end of your rope") was very similar to hers as well!
    Anyways, I did a dir/title="2.5" and found her original notes
    (266,420,488,533, and 569) each dealing with a single aspect of
    nasty two-year-old behaviour.   Maybe you'll find something useful
    in them.
    
    Carol - who's not looking forward to this upcoming stage! 

	Hi Loraine!

	I have a 2.5 year old girl as well.  I don't think what we're going 
through is as severe as what you are going through (although there are days...
Lord, there are days...).  But we see enough of the what you're talking about
to second some of what Carol said.

	I've heard it said the the problem with this age is that the kid is 
really getting a sense of self now.  This is empowering but also frightening.
I can see this is Katie's day to day behavior.  One minute she is *in charge*.
(Yesterday, she had to take her bag out of the cubbie just just so she could 
put it in her "big self".)  Yet a little while later, the same child who has 
been fully capable of pulling off and putting on pants for months, *needed* me 
to pull down her pants to go potty.  ("You can do it, Katie." "I caaaaan't".)

	Control seems to be a key issue with Katie.  Most of the time, the 
battles arise when we are not granting her enough control.  Now, you can do this
without totally giving your house over to the child.  For instance,  we let 
Katie decide which of two outfits she can wear.  If we give her free choice 
of the closet, she'll either take 14 years to choose or pick something 
inappropriate for the weather.  Often times, when we tell her that it is time 
to turn off the VCR and go to bed, she'll complain and if we turn off the TV,
she'll throw a tantrum.  BUT, if instead of turning it off ourselves, we ask her
if she wants to turn it off, she'll hop right up, grab the remote to stop the 
tape and push the button to turn the TV off.  So we give her choices of which 
and what where we can.  When a thing HAS to be done, we give her choices of 
how it is done or who does it.  And so on...

	Sometimes just backing off for a minute helps.  Over the holiday week-
end, we were at my parents house, so we had Granny, Grandpa, Aunt Kel and a 
brand new Uncle Dan to deal with as well as three dogs and two cats.  To say 
she was wired is an understatement.  When the self-destruction warning signs
started coming, I told here it was time to think about going to bed.  Her 
immediate reaction was "NO! Don't wanna go to bed!"  Rather than fight it, I 
asked her if she wanted to put on her pink nightie and show it to Uncle Dan.  
Well, that was a whole different thing than getting ready for bed! :-) :-)
So she cheerfully got into the nightie.  We showed it to Uncle Dan, then she 
turned to me and said, "I wanna go night-night". 
  
	I also second Carol's point about letting the kid pretend to be the 
"big guy".  If we are all sitting around in the evening, sometimes Katie will
tell us that "Daddy being mean. Go timeout, Daddy!"  (Mind you, Daddy was just 
sitting reading a magazineat the time. :-) )  But when it's done in obvious 
pretend mode like this, we'll comply.  (Now if she were being snippy and said 
this in response to be disciplined or something, we would not.)  Katie likes 
playing monster right now and she like taking turns chasing and being chased,
we let her decide which she wants.

	Bottom line is pick your battles wisely.  If the issue is not really 
important, let the child have some control.  And be consistent.  If you say no,
don't let the whining wear you down or you'll have even more battles on your 
hands.  

	I KNOW it's tough to be cheerful and creative in finding alternate ways 
of doing things when the mutinous little bottom lip is stuck out right in your 
face.  I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself that a battle takes
just as much effort and has much less desirable results.

Tracey

Books are the only thing that keeps ME SANE!  When I start questioning "what
am I DOING WRONG ...?", I pick up Brazelton's "Toddlers and Parents" (note
the sequence of nouns! ... yeah, he's sure got that priority correct!) and
Ames' "Two-year olds" -- if only to reenforce the fact that "I'm not alone",
"I'm not imagining all this!", "my child IS normal???", see how others address
situations, and sometimes just the humor in the book gives me that much
needed "fresh breath".

I bought a new book last night ... "Who's in Control?"  and golly did it
provide me with some very good, hearty, much-needed laughs!  Juli fit his
"sample" to a "tee" and his approach seemed to fit my personality to a "tee".

In one paragraph he talked about a 2-year old's "reaction" to Mom's FINALLY
giving up and having a good cry session ...

	Your child will be very empathic to Mom's crying.  S/he will
	not accept any responsibility for this situation, HOWEVER s/he will
	recognize the fact that Mom IS crying.  S/he will comfort Mom.
	Do NOT be disillusioned in believing that the child will remember
	what brought this about and never do it again.  All the child
	is concerned about is GETTING MOM BETTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, so
	s/he will have Mom "in control" to handle his/her NEXT batch
	of demands!  All a 2-year old understands is:  "Mom is NOT 
	responsive when she's crying, so I must get her "back into shape" 
	REAL SOON ..." -- this is all a "2-year old" can relate to!!!

Boy, how true this is!!!

He also mentioned that yelling at a child only teaches a child to yell back
LOUDER!  ... and capital punishment only "breaks a child's spirit".  I totally
agree on both of these.

So ... then how do YOU control your child.  You don't!!!!  You attempt to
"discipline" your child ... and the book gave some "good" suggestions and
approaches (well, along the lines of Jim/my parenting style anyway).

Daycare gives us "raving reviews" on Juli's behavior??!! ... I'm confused.
This is definately not the same child that cohabitates with Jim/me at 
82 Edgewood!!!

Is it Monday yet?

Dottie

    Oh, does this sound like James....!!!!!!!!!!!  
    
    As someone else said, Lorain, pick your battles,remembering that
    you can't make 'em eat, sleep, or s*** (Lillian E. Fagan, wife, mother,
    and sometime poet, 1918-1985).  I had a hard time getting JAmes
    dressed in the mornings at one poiint, which was very hard to take
    as I had been taught that the only time you left the house in PJs is if
    the building is on fire.  I decided that he WAS going to get dressed
    every day whether he wanted to or not.  If he wanted a treat, he had
    to eat dinner.  No dinner, no treats.  Bedtime is bedtime, too damn bad
    if you don't like it.  (Actually, he has almost never been a problem at
    bedtime.  Plenty of physical play during the day helps.)  We weren't
    shy about restricting TV viewing -- one weekend, he couldn't watch 
    AT ALL.  
    
    When he throws a tantrum, I just leave the room.  Without an audience,
    he
    settles down quickly.  I also used "the wooden spoon" on him a couple
    of times ("James, the reason why Mommy is going to spank you is because
    sometimes that's the shortest route to your brain.")  (Please, no
    ratholes about physical punishment.)  
    
    I guess this whole thing lasted about two months.  I was pregnant, the
    company Mike works for was on *very* shaky ground, I felt physically 
    lousy, and James' acting up was the last straw a lot of the time.  I
    spent
    most of February and March crying.
    
    Try a sticker system, too.  When you and your 2.5 year old are calm, 
    edplain that every time he does (whatever you want him to do) without a
    fuss, you'll put a star oir a sticker on the calendar.  When he rolls
    up 5 stickers, for example, you'll take him to Burger King, buy him a
    toy, etc.  If he screws up, just say, Well, no sticker this time," and
    start all over again.  This worked pretty well for me.  Just pick which
    thing you want him to do most (in my case, I wanted him to get dressed
    every morning without a hassle), and concentrate on that.  Then as he
    gets more stickers//easier to handle, you up the ante.
    
    Good luck, my heart is with you.

    One thing that I'm not sure has been mentioned or not before 
    regarding bedtime is to set the timer on the stove.  We have
    been doing this for quite a while (Michael is 3.5) and it works
    like a charm!  When I set  the timer, I let him know
    that the timer is on and when it goes off, it's bedtime.  
    
    At this point, it has become routine and we very rarely get an
    argument!  
    
    Nancy

    Boy - I guess ALL kids go through this huh???  For both of my boys, we
    did eventually hit the stage you're in now, where we couldn't do
    ANYTHING AT ALL without a MAJOR battle.  The turning point?? 
    Remarkably similar with each of them, though not from memory - just
    from being out of other ideas!  At the end of a particularly trying
    tantrum, gather him up in your lap and HOLD ON TIGHT and rock him and
    tell him how much you love him.  Tell him you UNDERSTAND that he
    doesn't like every one telling him what to do all the time.  But
    sometimes even Mommies and Daddies have to do things that THEY don't
    like.  "Mommy doesn't like to go to work every day, but I have to, and
    I don't cry and scream about it"  or shopping or cleaning or anything
    at all.  I think that it's about this age they feel pushed around and
    almost persecuted.  They're just starting to figure out that they CAN
    control their lives, and realizing that they CAN'T have everything they
    want, and probably more than anything, they're completely confused. 
    For each of my boys, these little conversations took at LEAST 1/2 hour,
    and we told them about other people that they're close to that do
    things that they don't want to do too.  Keep it simple enough so they
    can see and understand.  'Daddy doesn't like to pick up dog poop', means
    a lot more than 'I hate having to make presentations at work'.  Keep it
    on their terms.  Bring up things that you do for THEM that you may not
    love to do - so they can feel like you're sacrificing for them, not
    just them for you all the time(the way they see it!)
    
    NOW, this is NOT to say that things will be perfect, but after these
    conversations with my kids, their behavior improved DRASTICALLY,
    immediately!!  
    
    Jason is now 3 1/2, and it's still not great, but we're getting there. 
    He still has his temper, but the most effective way I've found to deal
    with that, is to hold on to him.  He's a VERY sensitive kid, and most
    of the reason he throws a fit is because he's been emotionally hurt by
    someone, and doesn't know how to deal with it.  I get as close to him
    as he'll let me (which sometimes isn't even in the same room), and tell
    him I love him and try to stroke his head or his back or something, and
    talk to him until we can find out what's REALLY wrong.  I don't always
    have the time to do this, or the situation isn't right, but when I do
    take the time, he comes out of it a lot faster and a lot happier in the
    end.  AND it turns out that he's not just having a fit to be a brat
    (usually!), but he's really genuinely hurt.
    His brother on the other hand - if I tried to cuddle him when he was
    mad, I'm liable to be slugged or kicked, so we just let him go off and
    be mad, and he comes around in a few minutes - so it depends on the
    kid!
    
    GOOD LUCK!
    

    I just discovered this notes file and in particular this note and you
    have no idea how much I needed to read this note right now (well on
    second thought you probably do).  I have a 2.5 year old boy who has
    been an absolute dream until this past month.....he has begun these
    blood curdling screams when it's time to get ready to go to the
    babysitters, or to bed, or if my older son puts him on a different
    potty then the one he wanted to go on.....really?!?!?!?!
    
    A little background.....my older son is almost 14, so needless to say I
    haven't gone thru this in quite some time, and my husband and I have
    seperated in the last 5 months, so there are alot of things for all of
    us to deal with.  He seemed to adjust fine to moving into a new place,
    the babysitter, etc. stayed the same so he didn't have those kinds of
    changes.
    
    It just seems like the past 2 weeks, this holy terror has taken over my
    sweet baby's body!!!  I have tried everything to get him to quit this
    awful screaming.  By time I've left him at the sitters I'm wrung out
    and still have to deal with the day at work.  Then it has started again
    at bedtime....again no routines have changed, but his reaction to them
    certainly have.
    
    Last night I finally just put him in his room and told him he could
    stay there until I thought he'd be a good boy.  I left him in there for
    45 minutes while my other son and I enjoyed a peaceful meal for a
    change.  When I went to get him out, he seemed to be much better and he
    ate his dinner and watched the show I told him he could watch and then
    went to bed much more quietly then he has been lately.
    
    This has got to be the toughest age of all......although 13 isn't so
    great either...but I'm sure that's in another topic...8^).
    
    Well I had to vent and hopefully reading all the other notes that have
    been referenced will help to give me the strength to endur this until
    the next stage starts.  You wouldn't believe how much you forget in 11
    years about what your kids do!!!  
    
    Anne