Whew

Ant was eating a banana muffin with chocolate frosting (don't ask) today after lunch. He dropped it, and said, "Oh no, stinker!". Glad I watch my language around him!

Evolution of sleep

I mentioned a while back that I'm a total geek and was tracking Timmy's sleep? Well, see below for the results. Each month has the monthly average sleep pattern and awake / asleep times at the top, followed by the data for the individual days. I think it is totally cool how you can see the change from essentially no schedule to a fairly consistent two naps over the eight months.

(Key: Black = asleep, white = awake, yellow = nursing, blue = bottle, red = dream feed; it's hard to see the latter colors in this thumbnail but if you click through to the bigger version you can see them. I started tracking nursing to see if dream feeds made any difference to length of time slept - answer was probably not.)

Surprise!

Ant still quite enjoys 'driving' the car, and as he's a bit older now, I'll leave him in it (in the garage with the parking brake on and in gear so it's not going anywhere) occasionally while I'm taking groceries upstairs or doing something with Timmy. Recently he started asking for the keys, since there's no way he can turn the car on (you have to have the clutch in while pushing the start button), I had been letting him.

Well... one day I came down to find him in the following position:



So of course I had to go and get the video camera!

Raising a boy.

I've just started re-reading "Raising Cain" by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. There are a few paragraphs that really struck home with me the last time I read them, and again today.

"Popular culture is a destructive element in our boys’ lives, but the emotional miseducation of boys begins much earlier and much closer to home. Most parents, relatives, teachers, and others who work or live with boys set out to teach them how to get along in the world and with one another. In the process of teaching them one thing, however, we often teach them another, quite different thing that ultimately works against their emotional potential. Traditional gender stereotypes are embedded in the way we respond to boys and teach them to respond to others. Whether unintentionally or deliberately, we tend to discourage emotional awareness in boys. Scientists who study the way parents shape their children’s emotional responses find that parents tend to have preconceived stereotypic gender notions even about infants (like the father we know who bragged to us that his son didn’t cry when he was circumcised). Because of this, parents provide a different emotional education for sons as opposed to daughters.

This has been shown to be true in a variety of contexts. Mothers speak about sadness and distress more with their daughters and about anger more with sons. And it shows. A study observing the talk of preschool aged children found that girls were six times more likely to use the word ‘love’, twice as likely to use the word ‘sad’, but equally likely to use the word ‘mad’. We know that mothers who explain their emotional reactions to their preschool children and who do not react negatively to a child’s vivid display of sadness, fear, or anger will have children who have a greater understanding of emotions. Research indicates that fathers tend to be even more rigid than mothers in steering their sons along traditional lines. Even older siblings, in an imitation of their parents, talk about feelings more frequently with their two-year-old sisters than with their two-year-old brothers.

Here’s how this gender socialization can look in its mildest, most ordinary form: Brad is four years old and has a question about everything. His mother fields most of these questions because she’s with him more often than his dad, and even when the whole family is together, she typically is the more verbally responsive of the two. She tries to give all questions equal attention, but what she doesn’t fully realize is that she, like any parent, subtly shapes the kinds of questions her child asks.

“Mommy, why do I have to sit in a car seat if you don’t?” he asks. She responds with a discussion of the safety advantages, and explains how it is against the law for children to ride in a car unless they ride in a car seat. Because of her thoughtful answer, Brad feels rewarded for asking about how things work, and is thereby encouraged to do it again sometime.

But in the park, when Brad points to a small boy who is crying and asks his mother why, she gives a much shorter and less animated answer. “I don’t know, Brad, he just is. Come on, let’s go. It’s not polite to stare.”

The truth is, Brad’s mother may not know why the little boy is crying, and she is teaching her son good manners when she tells him not to stare. But her short answer is less engaging, less informative, and less rewarding for her son. It subtly discourages him from thinking any further about why someone cries or what might have moved this particular child to tears. Her quick closure on the inquiry also may convey her own discomfort with the subject – a message boys frequently “hear” when fathers give short shrift to questions or observations about emotions.

Studies of parent interactions with both boys and girls suggest that, when a girl asks a question about emotions, her mother will give longer explanations. She’s more likely to speculate with her daughter about the reasons behind the emotion or to validate or amplify her daughter’s observation: “Yes, honey, he does look very sad. Maybe he’s got a little hurt, or he’s lost his toy… What do you think?” the message the daughter gets is that it’s okay to be concerned about another’s feelings; her natural concern and empathy are reinforced.

Boys experience this kind of emotional steering constantly."

Since reading this book, I've tried to incorporate talking about feelings with Ant on a regular basis - in examples like the one given above about the child asking questions about emotions, as well as asking Ant if there were things in his day that made him feel one way or another. I also try to give him words for how he might be feeling when he has a tantrum or gets upset about something, as well as telling him how I'm feeling when I'm in less than a good mood.

What kinds of things do you do to help encourage emotional literacy in your boy/s?

Skinny Minny

The kids were at my mom's house for a few hours this past weekend as Mark and I had stuff to do.

Ant went in, get this, a long sleeved shirt with a short sleeved shirt on top of it (I had asked him if he wanted to change into the short sleeved shirt - 'no thank you but I'll wear it on top'. So that's what he did), and long pants. On a day when it was 90+ outside!

When I got back to my mom's I had to change his diaper, and figured I'd take advantage and put him in shorts which Mark had packed into their bag. Only when I got home Mark was saying, where did those shorts come from?

Turns out they were actually a pair of *Timmy's* 6/9 month pants!!!!! I couldn't believe it, but they fit Ant perfectly as a pair of shorts (well, maybe more like capris). LOL. He's very skinny, we have to buy the 2T adjustable waist pants and tighten them as much as possible - I wouldn't have thought he could fit into infants clothes still at 2.5 years old though!

Sleep training

We let Timmy 'cry it out' a couple of weeks ago. It was a really hard night - he had two crying jags that were about 25 minute each, which seemed like an eternity. I lay in bed listening to him through the monitor (I did think about turning it off, but decided that if he was going to go through it I should too). I drove myself a bit crazy imagining what he was saying.

It started with a few nickers, "Mom, my belly's feeling a little empty!"

When I didn't show up he started crying a bit "I'm really pretty hungry, I'd like some food please!"

Previous nights one or the other of us would have gone in by this time, either to bink him or feed him, so it seemed he started realizing that something was wrong. "Mom, mom, mom, where are you? I'm really hungry, please come and feed me? Please???"

The cries then started getting even more strident, "Moooooooooommmmmmmmmmm! I'm hungry and lonely and scared, where are you? Did you forget about me? Where ARE you? You've never left me like this before! MMmmmmmmmoooooooooooooooommmmmmm!"

This was followed by the really piercing screaming, which I'd never even heard before, "I'm all alone now what am I going to do? I'm so sad and lonely, Mommy, Daddy, WHERE ARE YOU??? What have I done to deserve this? Why aren't you coming to get me you've always come before!"

Finally, he managed to calm down, but a couple of minutes later there were a few last cries; the kind you have when you've been sobbing and sobbing about something and you finally get all your crying out, but then think about it all over again and can't help a few last tears. "I was okay, lonely and still scared, but okay, but ooooohhhhhhhhhh, i just realized again that you've left me here all by myself!"

Fortunately it really was just that first night that was so agonizing for both of us, and since then we've had full (mostly) uninterrupted nights of sleep!

Trying to be positive (updated)

On Tonya's recommendation, I have slowly worked my way through 2.5 books in the positive discipline series by Jane Nelsen (Positive Discipline, the first years, the preschool years, and A to Z). I think they have some excellent suggestions, both for me to change myself, and my interactions with Ant (and others too!).

The basic tenet is to be "kind and firm" while parenting. Rather than punishment for "misbehaviour", coming up with logical consequences for actions, and following through with those consequences. An easy example is one I think many of us have used - if your toddler doesn't want to put a coat on, you say fine, and let them experience what outside feels like without that warmth.

I'm trying very hard to follow this model, and really do find that it's working for the most part. Today, however, Ant and I have been majorly at odds. He has decided that it's fun to dump out the recycle bin, which also at the moment contains a bunch of shredded papers. "It's snowing!" he cried in delight as he threw the papers up in the air. I gave a sigh, as I could see where it was headed, but decided that I might as well join in the fun. So we had a grand old time pretending it was snowing, throwing the shredded paper pieces this way and that, piling them on top of each other and pushing them around.

The trouble started when we were finished. I am so tired of cleaning up after everyone in this house, and I have decided that everyone else needs to play their part as well. Yeah. Ant does not like this new plan. I told him it was fine to dump out the snow and play in it, but that when we were finished, we had to tidy it up before we went on to play with anything else. I tried more pretending, "Let's shovel the snow into the bucket". He thought that was a great idea, grabbed a spatula, and shoveled one shovelful into the recycle bin. Then it was more fun to just push the 'snow' around. He also dumped the plastic drawers that have bibs, burp cloths and wash cloths in them. Put that on top of the recycle bin as a "snow separator". "Great", I said, "let's put the snow through the separator!" That also lasted about half a minute, with the majority of the 'snow' remaining on the floor.

I started the dishwasher, which Ant loves to do, but he wouldn't pick up the snow, so I couldn't let him help me. I pulled out the vacuum cleaner, and he was dying to help me with it - but still refused to tidy up. I tried a number of times taking him over to the piles and starting to pick it up myself, to no avail. I started the vacuum cleaner without him which led to wails and cries (and made me teary too!), but still didn't encourage snow removal.

He's currently napping; I put all the stuff into a big pile, and I'm really hoping that when he wakes up we can put it away. At which point the bin will go away so that dumping it again is not an option.

I feel like I can't let this lack of tidying go for too much longer or it's going to become a lifetime habit that I really can't live with. So I'm sticking to my guns. I just hope that I don't shoot myself in the arse with them!

Update: No dice with Ant cleaning up the nice pile of snow. Eventually I got so sick of looking at the stupid stuff I decided I needed a new approach. So I told him that we could trade - I would clean up the snow if he would do another job that needed to be done. He could put the books back on the shelf upstairs or straighten up downstairs. He chose the latter, we went down and he did a nice job of picking things up down there, so I cleaned up the snow. Hoping that wasn't a bad thing to do... I just couldn't take it anymore!