Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Parents are from Pluto

Our sweet Hadley

After talking with a friend about how we as new parents used to, and still do for that matter, handle things I came to the conclusion, we are weird creatures! Beginning with trying to conceive parents become so sure about how they want things to turn out. From there you have several possibilities, you either end up pregnant, you end up using fertility treatments, you go the adoption route, or you decide maybe things weren't meant to be. Any road shapes who you are going to be in the coming years.

Should you end up being parents you begin a long road of decision making, planning, dreaming, and opinion making. I have not met more opinionated people then those who are parents, including myself. I was never really opinionated about things in life, even those topics which don't pertain to parent-hood, until after I had Hadley. I often wonder though, are parents making decisions for the shock factor (i.e. to gain attention from others) or are they truly making those decisions because they think it is the best thing to do?

If you end up having a baby of your own accord or with fertility treatments you start with planning the birth process, whether to find out the gender or not, what to name the baby, or babies, and creating a nursery. These decisions are all necessary but we often meet at least one person who doesn't agree with a certain decision. We bring out the big guns, order the troops to the front line, and defend like we've never defended before. I remember when we shared Hadley's name with people before she was born you could tell those who thought it was a "different" name, even if they were not as openly objective as some. I became defensive with the first two people and then didn't care, it was our child, we were happy with our decisions so who cares what others thought.

Even with adoption you have a lot of decisions to make like which organization to go with, whether you want an open relationship with the birth parents or not, preferences on age and gender. Each decision is a big deal.

What's great is we all have choices and while it's easy to say one way is better than the other, as new parents do we really know? We've only had the experience once thus far. Even if we do things differently with subsequent children can any one person say their way is better, their decisions are better? Those decisions are better for that particular parent. Our goal as parents should be to raise healthy, responsible, kind adults so however we can accomplish this should be encouraged by other parents.

Parenting tools impelemented

Yesterday I shared some new tools Jon and I learned at our recent parenting class, Love & Logic. Today I'll share what we are implementing with our 2 year old.

So meal times are generally a struggle, as with most kids I believe. We were always worried she wasn't getting all the nutrition she needed so we're working to be a little more sneaky at each meal. Overall though we do not force her to eat. I refuse to get in a power struggle with her where we both end up frustrated and exhausted. One new statement we learned from our parenting class goes something like this: "Make sure you get enough to hold you over until breakfast (or whatever is the next meal)." We don't allow her to eat an hour later if she didn't eat her dinner and now seems hungry. When we have another kid and they are both older I'm not about to serve dinner at 4 different times. A Love and Logic way to deal with children who like to eat on their own schedule is to say, "Dinner is served from 5-6 so make sure you get enough to eat before dinner is cleaned up."


How does this work with a 2 year old you may ask? While she may not understand fully what we say, she will fully understand our actions the more consistent we are with them. Of course she'll learn the language along with our actions. The idea is to teach her to manage herself and her hunger. Again, since she's still little and can't manage her own nutrition Jon and I watch what we give her in case breakfast is the only time she's eating. I do not cater to her preferences for dinner, she eats what we eat. Breakfast and lunch are times where we offer her limited options though. As she gets older I hope we start putting more responsibility on her to manage her nutrition.

"Bedroom Time" (aka timeout) is another tool we are using. There is a little song that goes along with it. Essentially if your child is misbehaving/whining, in a cool calm voice you say, "Uh oh, looks like a little bedroom time coming up. How sad." And while you are singing that little diddy you gently put them in their room or in our case we put Hadley in her crib. I initially had a problem with this because I thought I don't want her to confuse her crib with timeout. Then I heard it explained as there should be no negative connotation to putting them there for timeout because if you are truly using a calm, empathetic voice the child will not have a negative association. We also, leave her door open for now, so she doesn't think it's bed time. As she gets older and gets a big-girl bed that may have to change. We also tell Hadley before we walk away, "When you're sweet you can come back." Within a minute or two she stops crying, we give her another minute or two as "quiet time" and then we go get her. Love & Logic says not to lecture about what she did wrong or remind her, because she knows why she was there. We give her a kiss, tell her welcome back and we're so glad she's calmed down. As a side note, we started time out before this class and her spot was in the hallway. We've since modified calling time out to "take some time to calm down, bedroom time, or take a minute for yourself." Just this week I've had to start putting her in her crib because she is just now starting to walk away from the spot.

We are working on the enforceable statements, "Little girls who eat their dinner get dessert." "Feel free to play with your toys once you pick up your shoes," are a few examples. I'm still not sure if she fully comprehends what those mean but she generally follows through and we continue to practice so it will be second nature as she gets older.

One more tip I did not include yesterday, but I think is great to use with toddlers is the Energy Drain. For example: Johnny has bedroom time 4 times throughout the day, which is exhausting to his mom. Later that evening he wants to watch Elmo. His mom says, "How sad. I don't have any energy to turn Elmo on because I had to put you in your bedroom 4 times today. Maybe I'll have more energy tomorrow."

For older children who can do chores around the house it would be best to say, "Can you think of a way to give mom an energy boost?" Then the kid can list several chores and you chose which one, or maybe all, will give you your drained energy back. This can take place over several days too, depending on the amount of "energy" drained.

Parenting

Jon and I have just finished a 7-week parenting class called Love and Logic. I know several times I've posted on FB how much I've learned in the class. In fact I wish I had taken this as a new teacher, it would have saved me a lot of energy, tears, and frustration as well as helped build better relationships with my students. In a world of entitled, spoiled kids it was difficult to teach them respect and kindness. Just having a few of the different phrases Love and Logic offers would have made a world of difference for me and I believe for my students too. But alas, that is the past. If I ever go back in to teaching I know how to use it all. The great part is they actually have an entire set of curriculum just for educators. I now have my own child to focus on.

Here are some basic tips we learned from the class:

- Give children lots of options when appropriate so when you have to make a choice for them (i.e. for their safety) they are willing to go along with you. Say, "We usually give you a lot of choices right? Like we let you choose what to wear, what to eat, etc.? Well there are times were we need to make decisions for you and this is one of those times. Ok?" There are rules on giving choices that are discussed in class, because obviously not all situations are ripe for giving a child options.

- Give heavy doses of empathy. They caution against the empathy sounding like sarcasm. Not only does this let the child know you care about what they are experiencing in the situation but it also helps the parent control their anger. You don't want the child to focus on how angry you are, you want them to focus on the issue. Say, "Oh how sad....."

- Let the consequences do the teaching. The overall idea of this parenting technique is letting your children essentially fail at a young age when the consequences are small so when they become adults they are better at thinking for themselves, predicting consequences, and accepting responsibility.

- It's ok to delay consequences, especially if you need time to think of one. Make sure you give yourself and your child a deadline for a consequence. Say, "We'll talk about this later, but don't worry about it. " or "Don't worry I'll take care of it." (There is still a consequence when the parent has to take care of something for the child).

- Allow the child to think of ways to solve a problem. a) Give a dose of empathy; b) send a power message, "what do you think you are going to do about it?" c) Offer choices of what "other" kids might do. d) have the child state the consequences of each choice. e) Give permission for the child to either solve the problem or not solve the problem, "Good luck, I hope it works out." This process has so many positive impacts on a child.

- Use enforceable statements. Say, "You're welcome to go outside as soon as you finish your homework." or "Feel free to go over to your friends house once your room is clean." It avoids the buzz word, "no" that most children will latch on to and argue with you about.

What Love and Logic is NOT about -- Reminding children over and over again to get something done, lecturing children on what they did wrong, spending energy worrying or fixing the problems your child creates (aka enabling), angry and yelling parents.

These tips we learned are summarized and certainly not exhaustive. There are guidelines to follow to make each part of the process a success. The only way to successfully implement this and feel encouraged to do it is to attend a class. While Jon and I were always wanting the same for our children it's a whole different ball game to execute discipline and consequences to help our children get there. I feel like this has given Jon and I a concrete structure to follow so we are on the same page with how to handle situations. I like that each process they offer, like allowing the child to solve the problem, is general enough to use for a variety of situations. So one strategy doesn't work just for dinner time issues. I'm not worrying about what to do when situation A happens because we have an outline to follow for situations A, B, & C.

Of course we can't implement everything at this moment with Hadley. A 2 year old can't really solve all her own problems but we are letting the consequences do the teaching. Tomorrow I'll share a strategy we are already implementing with Hadley.

PS - If you are interested in taking this class our church, Pantano Christian Church, offers it about 3 times throughout the year and it does not have anything to do with religious or spiritual issues, although it does fit well with biblical teachings. So don't worry about being preached at or about being a member of our church, it's open to anyone. It also doesn't matter what age your children are, and frankly if you're a new teacher or seasoned teacher (without kids) interested in taking it for your students, I'd sign up!