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.