Ant is going through a new phase. At least I am praying to the gods every day that it's a phase. He likes to dump things. The drawers full of his kitchen toys and cars and art supplies. The boxes full of blocks. Plastic bags of letters. Pulling everything out of any available cupboard. The refrigerator. Pulling all the toilet paper off the roll, and all the tissues out of the tissue box. Dumping everything on his plate onto the high chair or booster seat tray. Scraping all the letter magnets off the fridge.
I know that this is something that lots of kids do, but what really gets my goat is when I ask / tell him to STOP, he looks right at me, gives off a manic laugh, and keeps on doing it. We have instituted time-outs for this frank disobedience, but the jury is still out on whether they're working or not.
I discussed with a friend of an older generation the other day, and she suggested that perhaps a little smack on the hand might get his attention and stop the behaviour. So I tried it when he took his milk box, said, "SQUIRT", and squirted it all over the kitchen. Well, I said "ANTONY STOP IT" and he did it again, and that's when I gave him a two-fingered smack on his arm. It didn't stop him from anything, if I hadn't been holding his wrists at the time he would absolutely have continued with the squirting, but he did say to me, "Mommy, don't hit me!". So that did nothing except make me feel horrible.
Another thing that is driving me up a wall is that along with this joy in dumping things out comes a serious lack of desire or willingness to clean anything up. I know we should have started having him clean up after himself sooner, but that's not anything I can change right now. So not only is he creating absolute disasters, it's then a 10-15 minute process to get any kind of assistance from him in tidying. Timeouts don't seem to do the trick at all, the only thing that seems to work is the threat of something "going away" - he helped Mark clean up the letters from the fridge in order to get his puppy back (well, really it's Timmy's puppy), and helped me clean up the blocks tonight after I threatened to take them away. But I'm really not sure if that's motivation that we should be using.
Since I seem to be in a complaining mood, I might as well get it all out there! The whining! The whining. Gets old SO quickly. Especially when he whines or cries for things that we A) haven't said no to, and B) wouldn't say no to. We try to say, "Ant, there's no need to whine, just ask!", but that doesn't seem to help much. And I wonder then if he's getting the idea that whining will get him what he wants, because he's using that tone of voice for things that we have no problem giving him.
And the last thing - is there supposed to be a 27 month sleep regression? For ages we were in a lovely pattern of a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon, 7:30 bedtime, with wakeup somewhere between 6:30 to 7. Well, in the last few weeks the afternoon nap has been skipped quite a few times, and at the same time, he's not going to sleep until somewhere between 8:30 and *11*! The late bedtime is also wrapped up with turning on the overhead light in his room. I figured out the other day that I could circumvent that at least by unscrewing the light bulbs. Score 1 for me. Not that that means much. It does seem that he's more likely to go to bed closer to the normal time if the nap is skipped. But boy is it a tough choice to make - do I give up my afternoon time for a free evening, vice versa. We've been congratulating ourselves recently for NOT making the transition to a regular bed yet, as I'm sure that the freedom to get up would have made bedtimes even later. Then, of course, there was the one time he did actually climb/jump/fall out of his crib. That's only happened once, and it probably does mean that we should convert to a bed - but I so don't want to!
Any thoughts or suggestions on how to deal with any of this, books we should read, magic sprays to use, anything?
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4 comments:
I just wrote about our crazy sleep night. So I wouldn't be surprised by a 27 month sleep regression. With J, my guess is his mind is so active, it's hard to shut off at the end of the day.
Some of my friends swear by crib tents. I fear big kid beds.
I don't think it's wrong to threaten taking things away. Whenever possible, we try to put something in time out rather than a person -- you do something wrong with a toy or something at the table, it goes in time out. It seems relatively effective... until the next time.
We have been going through this, too (the whining, the gleeful destruction). I'd be hijacking your comments section with my experiences, and don't want to come across as too opinionated. Please let me know if you're open to some ideas of things that are working for us?
What's helped us with the putting away things (as mine also have a fantastic ability to make a giant mess) is to hand them something and have them put it away. Or say something specific, like "Can you put the blue sock in the hamper?" Telling them to clean up was too general. I also try to make it a game such as, let's see how fast we can do it! or let's put all the yellow toys away.
For sleep, all I can say is learn from my mistake and keep him in the crib as long as possible. I had perfect sleepers before putting them in beds. Now it's horrible.
I was reading penny leach today and she has good reasons why clearing up is hard for them, it just doesnt' make any sense in their logic. She suggests Jenn's kind of strategy, e.g., "I bet you can't get all the blocks back in the bag before mummy counts to 10" etc.
And I empathise on the whining, it's driving me potty and pob really isn't that bad at it.
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