Mom, Can I….???

June 26, 2009 — threelittlejewells

Love, love, love the post below!

Requiring Your Child To Ask For Permission

Think about the things your child does that nag at you a bit. If that little voice of intuition is speaking to you, it means something.


Here are some signs you need to have your child ask for permission:

  • It’s very quiet in the other room and you discover your child elbow-deep in playdough…on the carpet!
  • Your child goes out back (or front!) by himself.
  • Your child pulls out bubbles and other messy crafts at will.
  • You’re playing outside and he pulls out his bike, scooter, soccer ball and tennis racket. By the time he’s done, the entire neighborhood is scattered with your belongings.
  • Whenever the mood strikes, your child rummages through the pantry or refrigerator for a snack.
  • Your child acts like the house is his playground. He is allowed free access to any room.

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Difficult

May 29, 2009 — threelittlejewells

“That Difficult Age”

Man-oh-man, Sweet Savvy is at that difficult age! I always say that 12 months – 24 months is SUCH a difficult age and boy is she reminding me of that lately.

Of course, Kip and I aren’t helping things.   We’ve been so besotted with this baby that we’re like two blathering fools.   She’s over in the corner having a fit and the two of us are sitting there like idiots going “oh, the baby is so beautiful even when she’s mad” and “oh, it’s just so precious”.   I looked at Kip the other day and said “What in the world are we doing???   We KNOW better!”

Savannah, 21 months old,   Thursday, 5/28/09   (I often wear my sunglasses pushed up on my head like this- I love that she found these kid sunglasses and is copying me.   Such a cute baby.)

It’s time to crack down on the fit throwing, etc.   One thing that I’ve never totally successfully trained for at this young age is sitting- I KNOW she can do it, but somehow I’ve failed in this area.

Anyhow, Kip and I???  We’ve got work to do.

Here’s a couple posts that have been encouraging to me lately.

Like Mother, Like Daughter has a really excellent post up entitled “Dear Aristotle, he’s so clever” about obedience.

Here’s the goal (it’s two-fold): To enjoy a bit of peace at home, and to be able to tell God that you took seriously the obligation to train your child to be virtuous — which, as dear Aristotle reminds us, is the ability to do the right thing for its own sake.

————–

Foolish parents constantly react to (or ignore) their children’s misbehavior, instead of taking the time to instill good behavior.

They constantly seek affirmation from their children, and so are either afraid of administering the punishment necessary, or retreat after doing so out of surprise that their children show them attitude.

Attitude is what I define as a reaction that you can safely ignore or call out (“Young lady, stop that whining!”), but never take seriously — never let affect your own will.

————–

Generation Cedar has a good blog post up entitled “Early Child Training“.   Here’s an excerpt…

My youngest daughter (18 months old) has entered “the moment of truth”.  It is crucial, IMO, that child training starts very early–even as babies we begin using certain words to get them familiar with our expectations, but between the ages of about 1-3, training is intense…they are

testing the waters

checking the boundaries

making sure the perimeters are in place–’cause it’s going to be a scary world if they’re not.

————–

Childwise Chat has been doing an excellent series on obedience in children.   Well worth the time to read and very encouraging.

————–

Books and Bairns has a post up that I regard as simply PERFECT-  Take a few moments and read this:

I AM NOT THE MOTHER I WANTED TO BE

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Cranky McCrankyPants

November 9, 2008 — threelittlejewells

See this precious one? Oh, but has she been a CRANK lately.

I’m remembering why I always say that the age from 12 months- 24 months is THE most difficult age. She threw a flat out, screaming, FURIOUS fit the other day.

However. I am determined to conquer this defiance NOW rather than later.

With Mary, we met the fits head on at around this age and conquered them. It was a trying several months but after that she was, and continues to be, just a dream.

With Nathan, we let it go. When he was 15 months old- 22 months old we were in the process of selling our house and all the work that that entails, buying a new house and completely renovating it, moving into new house and having a miscarriage. It was a horrible, horrible time. The worst time of my life. And I let things slide discipline-wise with Nathan. It wasn’t his fault and I should have done better.   I got in the habit of avoiding things that I knew would make him angry and trying to distract him or appease him when he did throw a fit just because I thought I had other more important, pressing things to do than stop and address his fit.   I should have realized that the other things were not as important as training, disciplining and teaching him properly. Somehow I lost focus of what was truly important and oh, how we have paid for it. Not just us, but Nathan too. By the time he was 2yo the pattern of disobedience was set. It was to late to turn things around easily.  We have had to work SO hard to turn things around with him. It’s been a hundred times more difficult than it was with Mary. We let his disobedience grow and become ingrained. He developed the habit of defiance. And it has been much, much more difficult to root it out of him. And it’s been hard for him too- it’s been and continues to be such a difficult lesson for him. Last Thanksgiving was the turning point for us and great strides have been made this year. But it’s been very hard work and not something that I wish for Savannah to have to endure needlessly.

So- the work has begun. She MUST learn to obey. It is a cruelty to her to allow her to grow in disobedience, to let it become ingrained in her habits and personality and to then try to root it out once it is deeply entrenched. I cannot allow this to happen to her- she is too precious to me.

*If she is old enough to throw a screaming, furious fit she is old enough to obey cheerfully.

*If she is old enough to look at me in the eye when I tell her “no” and to do it anyway, with that knowing gleam in her eye, she is old enough to obey.

*If she is old enough to be angry because I told her “no”,  then she is old enough to understand “no” and to obey “no”.

My goal for her is to be a happy, cheerful, content little girl and I intend to do what I can to help her grow in that area.

Savannah on Sunday, 11/9/08

Here she is this afternoon.   She’s pulled Mary’s new coloring book down from the craft table and is inspecting it.

She found a crayon and thinks she might try out this coloring thing like the big kids do.

Clearly, Daddy’s work boots are the perfect place to store crayons.  Later on Kip found a whole box full of crayons in his boot.


The next few months will be a lot of hard work but she’s worth it, don’t you think?

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New Winter Coats, New Big Bed and a Little Bit of Training

September 19, 2006 — threelittlejewells

Lots to report today! :)

First of all, in an earlier post, I wrote about buying Mary and Nathan their new winter coats at a consignment sale. I finally took some pictures of them tonight- pretty cute stuff! Here they are:

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Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Sickness continued…
I also, finally, went to the doctor today after five weeks of this horrible, wrenching cough. I love, love, love our doctor. Dr. Reade has a Christian practice, which I think is so cool in today’s world. They are very open about it, pray with their patients if you request it- just wonderful. The doctor shook his finger at me for not coming in weeks ago, said I have some sort of rabid infection in my throat and wrote me four prescriptions. Let’s hope I feel better soon.

Nathan’s Big Bed
Sunday night, after Kip and I put the babies to bed, we were putzing around downstairs and heard a loud thunk followed by much wailing and heart wrenching sobs. Of course, we make a mad dash upstairs to find that Nathan has fallen out of his cribby. After a lot of consoling, rocking and loving, we put him back to bed. Yesterday morning (Monday), I was upstairs around 11:00am putting away laundry, waiting for Nathan to wake up from his morning nap. I hear his door rattling! What in the world?? You guessed it, big man has figured out how to climb out of his crib and is trying to get the door open. (This must have been the cause of the previous night’s fall). I put him back in his cribby just to see what he’ll do- promptly climbs out again. So, obviously, it’s time for the big bed. I went out today and purchased a good set of bed rails for his new bed. He’s got Uncle Mikey’s bed from when he was a boy. It’s an antique cannon ball bed and quite high so we really did need some good rails to contain Nathan. After dinner, we took Nathan’s crib down and moved it to the nursery. We moved the dresser around in his room and brought up his tool bench which has been out in the garage since we moved. Boy, was Nathan *thrilled* to have his tool bench back! Here’s some pictures of the big boy and his new big bed and his new room. We don’t have any pictures or things hung up yet because we knew that when he moved to the big bed we would change his furniture around so we’ve been waiting on that. Anyway, the pictures:

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Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

A little bit of training:
When Mary was about Nathan’s age we trained her to “put your hands in your lap”. It helps for those times when there are lots of things to grab and touch that should be offlimits. For example, when Jennifer Routh was here visiting with Anna, who was six weeks old at the time. Mary was just all eyes and wanted to watch Jenn change Anna’s diaper. Instead of telling her “no, you can’t touch the baby”, “no, don’t touch the diaper”, “no, don’t touch the powder”, etc. I just told her “Mary, put your hands in your lap”. I like that it is a directive and not a constant list of no’s or what not to do’s. At any rate, it was time to start that training with Nathan. We started tonight after dinner- here are some pictures of Nathan with his “hands in your lap”.

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Cookies
Finally, Mary and I made cookies this afternoon. The Great Wild Wildebeest crept around underfeet destroying the cabinet with the measuring cups while Mary and I worked on baking Aunt Greta’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. ;)

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