Today is the big day, I officially weigh in for the biggest loser competition. Our team name is the Pound Dodgers. I wanted the Gazelles, but my team thought that was dumb.
I had my first official good workout. I was able to work out at an intensity that caused me to breath hard and sweat. This did not cause pain in my Achilles heel, arches, knees or back. This is great progress. Glad I have been in training for the diet, working slowly toward an intense workout instead of hurting myself. But, the biggest, coolest thing is that I was happy and felt joy after the workout. I was feeling like killing people, now happy. Must be all those endorphins I keep hearing about but never really encountered.
Now that Lily is feeling better. She barfed so much we had to shampoo the carpets. Two year old barf is quite stinky and we could not get out the smell without a shampoo. This is day three of no barf, yeah. She is still not 100% but getting there.
Lots of mommy bloggers are in heated discussions about kiddie discipline. I thought I would add my two cents here. I have complex ideas about discipline. I used to feel like I knew it all. I worked at a child development center that practiced the Montessori method. I was required to read 13 modules and demonstrate competence in each of those areas. And I whole heartedly agreed with this method. That is until a kid kicked me in my head and I wanted to punch him in the face. After that I quit taking care of other people's kids. Then my sweet Miss Lily was born.
Mandy had always been such a easy to discipline child. She is actually much more critical of herself than I am critical of her. I always get those sweet notes from teachers about how wonderful she is. Yeah, Mandy.
When Lily hit the terrible twos at about one and a half I was still mad at the Montessori method and its lack of discipline. So I decided that Miss Lily needed a firm hand. I provided a schedule of activity all day, I saw to it that her needs for stimulus in various areas were all met. Gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, social all areas were addressed. I gave her plenty of one on one attention. I allowed there to be child led activities and mommy led activities. But, anytime she acted in an inappropriate manner, she received a firm reprimand followed by a time out if necessary.
Lily did not respond well to this method. Perhaps if I had a British accent? Our lives went from bad to worse. I tried this for months. I am a slow learner, perhaps this is where Lily gets her stubbornness from? Ah, the apple of my eye. So after what seemed like forever, I recognized that I was living in hell. Lily was screaming and throwing tantrums every waking hour of her life. She was so mad she fought me on everything all the time. Our home was very unhappy. Everyone here was effected by the constant screaming. It was awful. I decided that I didn't want Lily's life to be like that, nor mine or the rest of the family. So I reconsidered the Montessori method. I thought about it for ages. I discussed it with Jeff for ages and we came up with the Lily plan. We continue to tweak the Lily plan by responding to what works and what doesn't.
The thing is that if I hadn't worked at the
In a nutshell, with Lily we work on one behavior we wish to correct at a time. Other behaviors we don't care for we gently re-direct her. Meaning that if she is doing something I don't like and that is not the behavior we are currently trying to work on, then I physically stop her from doing it and get her excited about something else, not reprisals, not harsh words, just a re-direct. However, that one thing we are working on, I am a bit more stern. I don't immediately jump to the time out, I don't use confrontational language, but I do force the issue. Eventually when she learns to conquer a specific bad behavior we move on to a new challenge.
Our first challenge was running away from me. Being that this was the first challenge we encountered it was the hardest to break. It took me about six months of walking to the playground and home everyday to teach her how to walk with me without running away or throwing a fit. Now she is an angel about walking with me, even in stores. She listens and going places is so pleasant. After that we worked on eating with a spoon and fork, cleaning up toys before bed, and now we are working on not screaming when she is frustrated. This one is difficult, but we are making progress.
I bought Lily puzzles. She loves puzzles but they frustrate the crap out of her. So we do our puzzles and whenever she gets frustrated we gently work on how to express frustration without screaming. So this is my discipline method. Our home is a happy place, Lily is progressing to better behavior, slowly. I have chosen to embrace her inner strength and choose a more Montessori type method, it seems to be working. I do however know from personal experience that this method does not work for everyone.
Please feel free to tell me your thoughts on what a horrid mother I am for not using time out and being "afraid" to discipline my child. She is a handful. I do get constant criticism in real life, when she has fits in public. I am working on it, even though most people think she just needs a good smack. Did I tell you she can do a puzzle with 60 pieces, knows her alphabet, can recognize all the letter upper and lower case, knows a word that starts with each of the letters, and can count to 20, yet she cannot leave the gym without screaming so loud that she melts steel. She is cute though.
3 comments:
You have to do what works best for you and your child. I use the time out method for Jake because it works on him but I also do some of the montessori too. We focus on correcting one bad behavior at a time and then move on to the next. There is no bad method period. What works for you may not work for another. The bad part is when the parent looses control of him/herself and acts like the child, throwing a "temper tantrum". I have done that! :-) Love the vomit story...just went through that last week. Glad it is over and done with. Best of luck on the Biggest Loser Contest!
A little gem I have discovered is "take the tantrum to your room." I've noticed that there are times that my kids simply need to get that agression out, and I certainly don't want them bottling it up and then exploding.
So, our house rule is that the tantrum crying goes to the bedroom. It gives them the opportunity to either settle down, or actually go into their room and work out all of that excessive emotion.
It takes about a week of hand walking them to their room, before they understand the concept.
My youngest was so funny. I would say, "Please take that to your room." She would do some Lamaze-type breathing and stop immediately. However, one day, she threw a big fit in the car. As we pulled into the driveway, she yelled, "I need to go to my woooooooom!" She went straight to her room and cried it all out. It was just one of those days!
Since the day Griffin was born, we've had disciplining problems. Getting him diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder has helped, but I'm the only one that seems to remember that he has it. Everyone else wants him to be like a "normal" kid.
Sometimes, I think the disciplining problem is more on the adults not understanding the kids, rather than the kids not following the rules.
Anyway, back to the topic, for both boys we do a lot of redirection. And we've moved to doing the "thinking chair" which doesn't completely isolate them from everything. If the thinking chair doesn't calm them down, then they go to time out. Once calm in time out, then go back to the thinking chair.
And fits in public are part of life. I ignore the comments and stares and focus on what needs to happen to calm my kids down.
This parenting stuff is more than I bargined for sometimes.
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