My wife and I could be polar opposites when it comes to a lot of parenting. She’s really picky about what she eat so she was more tolerant of our daughter being picky herself.
I got tired of being told she didn’t want to eat this or that. I have really bad memories of being forced to eat stuff I just could not stand as a child, so I don’t force her to eat it all, but we work on needing a certain number of bites to get desert. Having her help with the food preparation also helps, even if it’s just washing the vegetables.
Ever since I noticed my brother issuing his sons empty threats I’ve caught myself doing it one too many times. Kids are smarter than you think and can see right through them.
It’s tempting to warn “You better stop that or we’re leaving right now!” 10 minutes after you get to the zoo on a trip you’ve been planning all week. But if you’re going to issue the threat you damn well better be sure you will follow through.
They’ll test the waters and call your bluff and when you don’t follow through you’re screwed.
I know frustrated parents that threaten their kids with time-outs a dozen times a day but I have never seen them actually administer any.
ENugent, I don’t have advice but I’m relieved (heh) that someone else’s kid isn’t fully potty-trained at four. Our four-year-old wets himself because he doesn’t want to stop what he’s doing and go to the bathroom. He’s good about poop, but we’re going through lots of pairs of underwear a day sometimes from the wetting.
Stickers don’t work, mild praise sometimes helps, bribes for peeing mean a thousand trips to the bathroom. Hey, I just had an idea- if he stays dry maybe I could offer half an hour of Minecraft a day.
Our kids generally have to eat what’s in front of them, but they can pick around the parts they hate. We require occasional bites of the dread substances, but not always.
I am so glad someone started this thread! Maybe with the amassed knowladge of Doper parents we can figure some stuff out (or at least commisserate).
My kids are 7(boy) & 8(girl). They could not be more different!
My daughter likes to follow rules and understand rules. She gets upset with herself when she doesn’t succeed at doing her best. She likes herself to be neat and tidy but leaves a giant mess in her wake that she seems incapable of cleaning up.
My son likes to know EXACTLY what the rules are and that you are going to follow through on what you say. For example, we were at the pool and he jumped in right on top of his sister. Since this is dangerous, I told him that if he did that again, he would not be allowed in the pool for the rest of the week. So, he did it again about 30 seconds later. <sigh> (I, of course pulled him out of the pool and no pool for the rest of the week.) The biggest problem with this is that if you don’t follow through on EVERYTHING, he feels the need to retest ALL of his boundaries. It’s exhausting.
He is also incredibly stubborn and won’t do anything he doesn’t want to. He likes things neat and tidy and while he sometimes needs to be reminded to clean up, he does a good job of it. He could care less how he looks and often comes in the house covered in mud, dirt and various unrecognizable debris.
And for people up thread who said it gets easier as they get older, you are wrong, it just gets different. Now I am dealing with catty girls in the neighbourhood. And puberty questions.
Except that forcing kids to eat something they don’t want to eat isn’t a guarantee that you won’t get a picky eater, either. My parents tried that. It didn’t work. I got less picky after I moved out of the house and got to try stuff they don’t like. Part of the problem is that they’re picky, too, and my pickiness and theirs combined rule out a lot of foods. I got less picky when I moved out of the house and their food likes and dislikes were no longer an issue with my eating, though finding a menu for a meal that I share with them or a restaurant to go to with them is still something of an issue. That only happens a couple times a month, max, though, so it is not particularly important to my diet as a whole. Most of the time, I can eat my food that they wouldn’t touch, and they can eat their food that I wouldn’t touch, and everybody’s fine with it.
There are picky eaters. I suspect there is no way to get a 100% guarantee that your kid won’t be one of them. I suspect even more strongly that there is no way to guarantee that your kid will like a specific food prepared in a specific way.
I’d say your rule set should be no bigger than the set of rules you’re ready to back up, but I’ve been introducing rules by first setting the rule and only enforcing it with the usual "stop doing that’ sort of thing for awhile. Then after it’s had a chance to sink in and he’s still not obeying it, I’ll tell him that if he doesn’t obey the rule, he’ll get time-outs. Once I tell him that, I back it up.
I don’t know if that’s better or worse than having time-outs for rule-breaking as soon as a particular rule is instituted, but it’s just what I do.
The Firebug turns 5 next week, so it’s been a while since potty training, but I remember it well.
It was very much NOT a situation where once he was potty-trained, he was potty-trained everywhere. It was more a gradual expansion of ability/willingness to use the potty in a wider variety of places and situations. First, at around his 3rd birthday, it was just home and day care. Then the babysitter’s house. Then bathrooms at friends’s and relatives’ homes. Then the bathrooms at the local (Annapolis) Trader Joe’s, which has the most homey bathrooms of any store I’ve ever been in. Then gradually more institutional bathrooms. (With a strong preference for toilets he could flush himself - he even still doesn’t like the self-flushing kind much, even though he’ll use one in a pinch.) The final hurdle came when he used the toilet on an airplane; I think that happened when we visited the in-laws last fall or Christmas. So with that, we finally were at the point where he’d use the potty pretty much everywhere if the need arose. But for awhile in there, we planned outings in terms of how long an interval he’d be away from a bathroom he’d be OK with. If it was too long a time, we’d put him back in diapers for the trip, then back into regular underwear when we got home.
And of course it took him 2-3 months after he was peeing in the potty before he’d poop there. (In the meantime, he’d ask to have a diaper put on him when he felt a poop coming on, so he could poop in the diaper. I kid you not. (Almost said ‘no shit’ but that didn’t seem to fit the situation. :)))
Yeah – I try to praise the Little One for things she can help, vs. things she can’t (that is, praise her for perseverance, patience, desire to learn new things, etc. rather than looks or innate intelligence) but I think it’s good to acknowledge that she is cute and smart, at least to me
Heh. I was looking at newborn pictures of the Little One the other day, and I was all “hmm, she was in fact a quite cute infant, but she’s not The Cutest Baby That Ever Lived like her dad and I were convinced she was when she was born…”
This irks me in terms of gender-imbalance; am I the only one? I tell the Little One she is cute/sweet a lot, because I would have no problems telling a son of the same age (2.5) that he was cute or sweet. But I rarely tell her that she’s pretty, because I have a hard time thinking I’d be constantly telling a boy he was handsome. She doesn’t seem to care very much either way, yet
We have a staple food (rice+beans+peas) that’s reasonably healthy, and she gets to decide between that and whatever we’re eating that night. Some weeks it’s rice and beans and peas all the way, and some weeks she mostly eats what we’re eating. It seems to work, but the Little One is also not the pickiest kid in the world, so not sure how well this strategy would work with a picky or stubborn kid (she’s stubborn, oh can she be stubborn, but not so much about food). My friend was amazed I could get her to eat peas at all, so… not sure what I would have done if she wouldn’t do that.
My experience so far has been that my kids have been pretty compliant and approval-focussed up to about age 6. Then all bets are off. There’s a big wave of stroppiness going around my Grade 3 daughter’s class, and it’s been there for a while…
With our lot, I was pretty slack about making them do chores for a long time, especially tidying up after themselves, because I hate housework SO MUCH and I simply couldn’t bear the extra effort involved in making them doing it, on top of the mind-numbing chore of making sure it got done.
Eventually we kicked off a scheme when they were 4 and 6, and actually that worked pretty well - they kept each other up to the mark, and whichever one had done her job for the day would make damn sure her sister had to go through the pain too.
I made up a bunch of “job cards” and when they’d done their job, they could put it on the chart to show they’d done it. Available options were feed the cat, take out the recycling, start the laundry (a bizarrely popular option), set the table, put the dishes in the dishwasher, make the bed (I added that one under sufferance - I don’t actually give a toss if beds are made)
They’re kind of outgrowing their jobs now, and I need to up the ante. Recently I added “Saturday Floors” which means going and taking every single bit of crap off the floor of your bedroom and putting it away. That was a LOT of effort (for me) because I had to help them both a heap at the start. Even when I wasn’t just doing a massive chunk of it myself (as the child wandered the room aimlessly) it could be a half an hour or more of me sitting there in the room with them going “Ok. Reach down, pick up a thing. Any thing. Look, there’s a thing by your foot. Pick it up. Ok. Now what is it, and where does it go? Right, put it in there. Now come back. Find a thing on the floor. Any thing. Pick it up. Look, there’s a thing by your foot. Yes, pick it up. In your hand. Not with your foot. Pick it up by your hand. Now, what is it and where does it go?..” and so on, ad insanitum.
Anyway, we’ve been doing that for about 6 months, and I just recently realised - yes, we are now at the stage where it’s actually a positive contribution. It is actually easier to get them to go do floor job than it is to just do it myself, then CAN just be sent into their rooms to clear the floors and expect that they can just do it.
I was raving about this the other day to a friend who has late teenagers, and she kind of patted me on the head in a slightly pitying manner, so no doubt we’ve got some regressions to look forward to in a couple of years. But for now - it’s nice!
I’m a semi-picky eater myself who has learned to try more things as I’ve gotten older, and I’m trying to raise not only a not-picky eater, but a child who has a healthy relationship with food. It isn’t easy, and we’re not even two years in yet. I really like what Ellyn Satter has to say about food and generally try to follow her advice.
My kids are much younger, so I’m not going to even pretend to know how to handle this.
However, I wonder if you have tried Parenting With Love and Logic? My cousin strongly recommended it. I listened to one of the free downloads, and it seemed interesting. I like the story they use to introduce the concept, about a young buddy who called his daddy a butt head. The father didn’t come up with an immediate punishment, but instead delayed it, and left it more uncertain but also gave the father more time to think about. Because the kid thinks that he got away with it, and so when the lesson does come, it has a higher saliency.
One of the premises is that you don’t argue with kids, but I don’t know if that is completely right. Anyway, getting back to the question of discipline, I wonder if taking away the immediate, certain discipline may help.
One of my certainties of child raising is that there are no certainty and no two kids react the same; so what works for one kid won’t work for other kids or for other parents.
If only the french would stick to their books :smack:
I have a 16 year old boy who was born with a heart problem and passed the first months in ICU with open heart surgery and problematic healing after that
however.. he’s taller than me now, just got a “very good” extr
I have a 16 year old who is cool and easy going. Responsable and mature kid as he is, he will still growl when I ask him to help me in the garden or do the cooking on his own though :smack:
My main rules from the beginning:
-He already IS someone, my job to discover and help him develop his talents
-NEVER say shut up when a kid asks a question
-more input from other adults is beneficial
-when he does something dangerous, look away and let him do his own experience
Our kids were mainly toiler trained somewhere between 3 and 4. I guess you could say we started trying to encourage them at about 2 1/2, in anticipation of nursery school, but it’s up to the kid to feel ready.
Our youngest successes were with our two children who are only a year younger than their next-oldest sibling. When next-oldest sib was being trained in his/her 3-yo year, the 2-yo wanted to imitate.
Strangely enough, my 4-year-old was one of those early trainers (having a sister just one year older), but for some reason, nighttime dryness hasn’t followed her trained-ness while awake the way it had for the other kids. She definitely wants to graduate out of pull-ups, but it’s just not working yet. I don’t think there’s anything to do for that, though.
If it’s not going well, it might be a good idea to put the idea away for a few months. The last thing you want is for it to be a major contest of will. Many kids around this age are in their first real stage of individuation, and have learned to say “no.”
IMHO absent any special circumstances, if the child is really ready it will take less than a week. If they’re not really ready it will take much longer – essentially until they are ready.
Anecdote in support: I had a neighbor who had a child almost exactly the same age as mine. Sometime between their 24th and 30th months of age, we both used the same method, which took a matter of days. Another neighbor told us she started toilet training her child at the age of six months! Her comment was that it was a good thing she started that early, because it took two years to accomplish.
The method essentially is to announce that diapers are now done, and that we are going to use the potty from now on. Child should wear clothing that is easily removed quickly. Throughout the day, perch child on potty about every 10 or 15 minutes for just a few seconds or as long as they will stay there. Eventually you will catch something in the pot. Make a great big honkin’ deal about it, and provide whatever bribe is most effective – a little piece of candy, a shiny sticker, whatever. Point out that if they need to pee or to poop they should use the potty. If there’s an accident, pop the kid on the pot, clean up the mess and express disappointment. Continue all day, and probably into the next, or as long as needed. If you get serious resistance, temper tantrums, etc., just forget about it for a while; the child is not ready.
ETA: Obviously this is more easily done if at least one parent is a stay-at-home caregiver. I don’t know how people who have little tots in daycare manage it.
Same here. You may as well test the waters, so to speak, earlier and see how they take to it, but don’t push it if you don’t absolutely have to. MLS’s strategy is the way to go. At that age, they’re mature enough to understand when they have to go, and should have enough control to say “I gotta go!” and make it to the bathroom. You just have to resign yourself to the idea that you’ll have to clean up a mess or two, and not freak out about it.
My daughter just turned 2 a couple months ago, and we started potty training at 17 months. I keep thinking that she is completely potty trained, but then she will have an accident once every few days and then I get discouraged again. So I guess it depends on what “complete” is. But when we started she would only pee on the potty maybe twice a day, so she’s definitely made a lot of progress.
The first month was hard and then after that it’s just been a matter of staying patient. I tried treats and rewarding her with special underwear, and she will get excited for a while, but then she just starts forgetting about or just not caring anymore even if I remind her. So while helpful in the short term, rewards haven’t really worked long term. The only thing that really worked was time (patience) and her slowly getting better at listening to her own body’s signals.
Anyway, so in my experience it might take longer when you start earlier, but I still think it’s worth it because it saved so many diapers, and there’s no guarantee it will be a quick and easy thing just because you wait longer to start.
2 and 1/2 seems a good time to me to start, but not making it a traumatizing “you have to” experience is very important.