Parenting

My daughter is physically cautious.  This makes life very easy on me, but it’s not something I’m completely happy about.

It started when Sammy was about 10 months old.  She never crawled, but just scooted around on her bottom.   Then she didn’t walk until she was 17 months old, but when she finally did, she had it all figured out in one day.  She could stop and stand still, carry objects, turn corners, and avoid walking into objects in her path.  She was also mature enough by that time that she didn’t throw herself all over the place, but just walked carefully to where she wanted to go.  I never had to go through that stage that everyone complains about with toddlers, where you’re just chasing them around all day long stopping them from killing themselves.  Sam almost never put herself in danger.  It was easy for me, but being risk-adverse is not something I want to encourage in her.

This slow physical development has continued and it seems to be part and parcel of her cautious nature.  Sam is definitely not a fearful child, but when she enters a new place (especially one with many people or a loud place) she will stop, look, and listen for quite a while before joining in whatever the activity happens to be.  It seems as if she doesn’t want to try physical activities until she somehow knows she can master them.  We bought her a bike a year ago and she’s hardly practiced at all, despite our gentle encouragement.  When she tries something and fails, her pattern is to get frustrated and retreat – not to try again.  I can’t imagine how anything we’ve done could have encouraged this – I’m pretty sure it is just part of her temperament.  But the combination of caution and lack of persistence is going to cause her problems down the road.

(Aside: Jenn Casey and Kelly Elmore have a good podcast on temperament which you can listen to here.  While I agree somewhat with their, and Positive Discipline’s, position on temperament, I do have differences.  Jenn and Kelly mention persistence as a temperamental trait, meaning that some children are just born more persistent than others.  I believe that some tendency towards persistence may be temperamental, but I don’t believe that it is a neutral character trait.  It is a virtue, and like other virtues, it may come more easily to some than others, but either way, it must be something parents actively work to foster in their children.)

Sam’s caution and her lack of persistence seem related to me.  They both imply a kind of perfectionism, or even a fear of failure.  I don’t know that a child can have those attitudes, but there must be some childlike equivalent in the way that they approach the universe.  Whether she was born with it or somehow developed it as an infant, she needs to learn another way.

Adam and I knew that the solution for this was to give Sam as many opportunities to try new things as possible, especially physical activities.  Inevitably, she would have some successes, and this would hopefully teach her that effort would bring her the value of achievement.  More experience would also help her learn that failure is not something to be feared, but a fact of life that you can learn from.  Unfortunately, Adam and I aren’t very physical people ourselves, so this didn’t come naturally.  Direct encouragement hadn’t been very successful for us either, and we would never force her to engage in an activity she was not comfortable with (like throwing her into a pool to get her to go underwater).  We did try using peer-pressure by trying to point out how much fun her friend was having riding her bike.  This was a dangerous, second-handed path though.  I mean, it was worth a try because you can legitimately learn from others this way, but it’s not something we would want to make a habit of.  To Sam’s credit, it didn’t work anyway.

So we decided to enroll her in one of those kind of “gym” classes for little kids. (You know, like Gymboree, Little Gym, or JW Tumbles.)  I’m not a fan of signing toddlers and preschoolers up for a lot of these kinds of activities – I think a lot of it is expensive nonsense – but we had a specific purpose in mind here.  I had a coupon for Tumbles, so that’s where she went.

At her first class, Sam hardly participated.  First off, she didn’t want to go into the play area without me.  This is where I have to walk the fine line of respecting her nature and yet not accepting it uncritically.  I told her that I was not allowed to join the group – that it was just for children – but that I would come into the play area and sit where she could see me.  All the other parents sat in the adjacent waiting area, but I sat on the floor in the gym.  Sam came over to me quite a few times that first class, but always went back to the group of her own free will after a moment of comfort.

During “circle time” she did not do any of the physical activities such as touching her toes or wiggling her hips.  She just stood and watched as the other children mimicked the “trainers.”  The trainers would also have the kids repeat cheers and yell out answers to questions and such, but Sam never opened her mouth.  She just listened.  This was fine with me.  I was just happy she stood in the circle with the others.

Then the trainers would have the kids do structured activities like climbing over a foam “wall” or walking across a balance beam or kicking a ball into a net.  These tasks were performed individually – the kids would take turns and get whatever help they needed from the trainers.  Sam was hesitant about these things, but the trainers were great at gently prompting her without pushing or forcing her.  (Trust me, I watched them closely for any disrespect.)  Eventually, she tried every single activity, but with hesitation.  When she did something wrong, they would cheerfully show her how to do it right, not just let it go.  I liked that, too.

There was also time for “free play” on the slides and bars and other fun equipment, and Sam jumped right into that.  She did her own thing, totally oblivious to what the other children were doing.  She was obviously having fun, but she didn’t try anything new.  She stuck to the slides, mostly, since that is what she is used to from her playground experience.

Sam went to this class for one and a quarter hours per week for eight weeks. By the end, she was a different child.

She stopped begging me to go into the play area with her, and just ran right in.  She threw herself into all of the structured activities and couldn’t wait for her turn.  She learned how to climb a ladder (something she would not even try on the first day), to swing from her arms from a bar and jump down, to cross a balance beam, to kick a ball (although very badly), and many other things.  She even got to go down a mini zip-line!

During free play, she interacted with the other children much more, and tried every piece of equipment at least once. The only area where you could still see a big difference between her and the other children was in circle time.  She did make some progress.  She would mimic the trainers’ actions some of the time, but only when it was something she had seen them do quite a bit.  She smiled some of the time, but still spent a good amount of time looking totally spaced out with her hand in her mouth (her comfort pose).  And she never ever joined in the verbal cheers and interactions.  I don’t think that is important at all, and it might even just be a preference of hers.

The important thing is that this environment somehow encouraged her to try new things and to keep working on them.  She still never did anything truly daring, but she didn’t seem light-years behind the others.   And also, she loved it!  She loved it so much that we’re having her birthday party there.

Sam is still a cautious child.  She still needs to spend about 20 minutes in any new, overwhelming environment before she gets comfortable.  She still hates loud or crowded places. But I don’t think any of those things are problematic. In fact, as long as I see her putting effort into things and persisting, I think her caution is a good thing.  I think she has turned a corner with her perfectionism, or whatever it is.  Now she seems more willing to try new physical activities, but at a slow, cautious pace.  She hasn’t totally rejected much of anything, lately.  She was fearless on our farm vacation.  I don’t know that she would have ridden the miniature horse before she went to Tumbles.  This past weekend, we went to the county fair and she rode her first roller coaster.  I knew she would like it if only she would try it, and try it she did!  We’ll just keep putting these options in front of her as often as possible, and hope that she learns from experience, that experience is how you learn.

I was driving around town with Sammy, listening to Cultivating the Virtues, a parenting podcast by Kelly and Jenn.  Kelly was discussing a situation where her daughter, Livy, was trying to glue something for an art project and having a hard time.  Kelly said that Livy was frustrated.  Now, we’ve been really working hard on helping Sam to identify her own emotions, so “frustrated” is a word that she knows and is really working to understand.  She piped up:  FRUSTRATED, MOMMY!  I paused the podcast and said that, yes, the woman had said that her daughter was frustrated.

WHY?

The girl was trying to glue something and she got frustrated and said, “I can’t do it!” just like you do sometimes.

YEAH, AND CRYING AND WHINING WON’T CHANGE THE FACT.

We’ve been working on that, too.

Will these potty training updates never end?  It’s been 9 months now, and sometimes it feels like we’ve made no progress at all.

After our nightmarish trip to Florida in March, I buckled down on the problem, which means that I stopped giving Samantha reminders, hints, or any negative attention related to the potty.  I just left her alone.  She started using the potty again some of the time, and she did fine at school after a few days of readjustment.  But she was still having an “accident” or two every day.  She just holds it until a bit comes out and we have to clean it up, but then a half hour later, a little more comes out, etc.  I started to worry about her physically damaging herself by holding back. 

Then a friend suggested that we try a different reward system.  It might not sound very different from the stars on the whiteboard system I tried before, but we gave Sam a ball to put in a clear jar each time she used the potty, and when she got 5 balls in (when the jar was full), she could choose a reward of a piece of candy, ice cream, or going out to dinner.  The real difference was in the concrete nature of the ball and jar system.  I let her use markers to color the Styrofoam balls and we kept the jar on a counter where it was always visible to her.

We had a lot of success with this system for a couple of weeks.  Then Sam learned that she could dribble a bit of pee in the toilet and get a ball, then go back and pee some more and get another ball, etc., until she had 5 balls anytime she wanted them.  (Damn that intelligent mind of hers!)

That’s been my experience with all reward systems.  They are totally useless for the long-term.  If all you need is a jump-start or a way to get back on track, rewards can be useful (and this kind of more concrete, visible progress is helpful), but they don’t really teach the child anything.  Sam needs to choose to use the potty for her own, real, selfish reasons.  The problem is that I have been completely unable to come up with any reason for her to use the potty.  From her perspective, there is just no reason at all to do it.  Well, I did know of one reason, but it was not something I was willing to do, as I’ll explain.

After she figured out how to game the system with the jar and balls, I told her that we’d go back to giving her a reward if she could go a whole day without having an accident.  As soon as I told her this, she went back to not using the potty at all.

So I put her back in diapers!  I swore I would never do it because I thought it would be like going back to smoking after the hell of quitting - it just could not be worth it.  But it was so worth it.  She was fine at school, but at home, I just put a diaper on her and told her that if she was going to keep going in her underwear, then she would not be allowed to wear them.  I told her that if she wanted to use the potty, she could wear underwear again.  I didn’t make a big deal of it, but just told her that I was not going to clean up after her anymore.  She was perfectly content with the diapers, and so was I.

Just a few days later, we had our end-of-year meeting with Sammy’s teacher (which I’ll write about in a separate post).  Her teacher brought up the potty training issue because she knows we’re struggling with it, and because there are occasional accidents at school.  She suggested that we make Sam clean herself up.  I was completely baffled by this suggestion.  I think others have suggested it to me before, but I’ve ignored it because I simply could not process the idea.  Really, I simply could not conceive of what that even meant.  I mean, SHE MIGHT GET POOP ON HER HANDS AND THEN THE WORLD WOULD END.  Right?  Isn’t everyone with me here?

So, the teacher suggested this and I really argued with her about it because I thought she must be insane or something.  She made the argument that this is the logical consequence for having accidents and I agreed with that completely, but my mind would just go blank when considering what to actually do.  All I could think of was poop all over the house.  But later, I started thinking about it and I realized something.  I already know that Sam fights me on the things that I am emotional about.  She had the hitting problem when I had the idea in my head that hitting was heinous behavior that needed to be stopped, now.  As soon as I let go of that attitude, she stopped (except for true loss of control, which is different).  And I already suspect that I have some kind of weird attitude towards poop.  Adam says I do, and I noticed that other people don’t worry about it if they get poop on their hands when changing a diaper.  They just wash their hands.  I am mortified if that happens.  Also, I have recurring nightmares about dirty public restrooms. 

So I started thinking that even though I’ve tried to make no big deal about poop to Sam, that she still KNOWS.  In fact, I realized that she might know me better than I know myself.  So I decided to try this letting her clean up thing.  And the first time I did it, I was really, really scared.  I got a glimpse of what it must be like to have a phobia – a completely irrational fear.  (I guess I actually do have a minor phobia.)  I had to force myself not to think about what might happen if I didn’t clean her up.  I took it one moment at a time.  I just told her that she had to do it and she could not come out of the bathroom until she did, and then I held my breath.  (I had talked to her about it ahead of time, too, of course.)

To my complete astonishment, that is all I had to do.  Sam is able to almost completely clean herself up, even after an “accident” that gets poop all the way down to her knees.  She fought doing it, but tears and screaming don’t scare me. In a few minutes she got started, asked me to leave the room, spent about 5 minutes and half a roll of toilet paper, and was proud of her accomplishment.  She’s fought me less each time.  With really messy ones, I might give her a wipe or two when she is done, but only to keep the house clean.  I suppose we’ll actually have to enforce the “wash your hands” thing now, which we’ve never made a big deal of before.  And I try not to think about what’s going on in that underwear. 

She had no accidents today.  Hurray for logical consequences!  Let’s hope I’ve finally solved this problem.

Sam is becoming quite the problem solver!  About 6 months ago, I started asking her to try to think of solutions to her problems on her own, instead of suggesting everything for her.  For example, she might whine and complain that I would not allow her to wear her sandals in freezing weather.  My old strategy was offering choices such as, “It’s too cold to wear sandals outside today, but you can wear your sandals in the house when we get home, or you can put on 2 pairs of socks under the sandals if you really want to wear them to school.”  But I started interjecting the occasional, “Do you have any ideas about how to solve this problem?”  She would occasionally come up with something in the easy cases, and sometimes she would just reiterate her original want: “I just want to wear my sandals!” 

Lately, though, she has been coming up with really creative solutions.  Sometimes she even comes up with ideas that would never have occured to me.  I can think of two examples:

A few days ago, we were hanging out with the neighbors in our front yard and Sam and her friend C. were playing hopscotch and throwing a ball around.  C. took off her shoes and I remembered that the lawn people had put chemicals on the grass that morning, so I warned C.’s parents that they might want to have her keep her shoes on.  Of course, as they were talking to C. about it, Sam started taking her shoes off, too.  I asked her if she had heard what I said about the chemicals.  (She knows all about not getting chemicals on her skin.)  I told her that she would need to keep her shoes on today.  She said, “How ’bout I just stay on the sidewalk?”  Of course, that solved the problem, and I told her it was fine and complimented her on her idea.  (She only forgot and stepped in the grass once – not bad!)

On Sunday, we were planning out our family time for the day.  When we have a lot of little things to accomplish on the weekends, I often suggest that we make a list and write everybody’s wants down, and then decide what to do in what order, to make sure everyone gets to do at least one thing that is important to them.  On this particular day, I wanted to go to Best Buy, Adam wanted to install some light switches, Sam wanted to go to the playground, and we all wanted to go to the dog park.  It was 10am and, trust me, it’s hard to accomplish all that if you don’t start at the crack of dawn.  I was thinking out loud about how we might get it all done and said, “and at some point before nap time, we need to have lunch.”  Sam piped up:  “How ’bout we have lunch at the playground?”  That solved the entire logistical problem.  We first went to Best Buy, picked up some fast food, and then brought it to the playground, so that we got all of that done before nap time.

Those are just two examples that occur to me at the moment, but Sammy is full of ideas like this, and she’s been showing fewer signs of frustration lately too.  Choices are still an important part of my parenting toolbox, but now I don’t have to come up with all of them!

Sammy has been using a knife for quite a long time now, and recently we’ve started letting her use the sharp steak knives when necessary.  I can’t take all the credit for her skill with the knife – she is a Montessori student, you know – but I can take credit for allowing her this freedom at the appropriate time and for not freaking out when she cuts herself, as you’ll see in this video:

One aspect of parenting that doesn’t seem to be a problem for me is the issue of shared or contrasting optional values.  Sammy has so many values that I don’t share, and, frankly, don’t understand (e.g., nail polish, tap dancing, Cheerios).  She hasn’t shown much interest in numbers or patterns yet, something that would make her more like me and which I could relate to better.  But I feel no resentment or disappointment about this – not even a hint of it.   Even more importantly, I don’t feel any kind of drive to push her into activities that are more in line with my values or regrets from childhood.

In contrast, her developing personality is a continual source of joyful surprise to me.  When we discovered her attraction to tap dancing, I was extra thrilled because I dislike tap.  Knowing that she came to that love on her own, with no influence from me, made it all the more enjoyable for me to witness.

I know that many of the things that look like values to Sammy now will fade away, or mature into things that I can’t anticipate.  Just because she loves piano, tap, and fancy dolls now, doesn’t mean anything specific for the future.  What I do know is that she is her own person – unique and individual.  This is one of the good things about the 3-year-old time – observing her developing individuality, will, and values.

At the same time, I know that her dad and I are influencing her choices and values heavily.  What videos I choose to show her on YouTube, what colors I point out when we take a walk, and pretty much every gesture and facial expression she observes in me, all will have an impact on her.  And those are just the Little Things.  Imagine how strongly my decision to send her to Montessori or to homeschool will affect even her optional values!

Her world revolves around her parents right now, and this will shape her future.  There is the explicit guidance that we give her to lead her towards non-optional values, virtues, preparation for life, and good habits, but I’m not talking about that.  I’m talking about the fact that we can’t help but have a huge impact on her personality and future choices about even the smallest things.  And that thought gives me enormous satisfaction, as well.  I don’t see any contradiction in enjoying both her independence, and her close connection to me.  And I don’t feel like I need to construct any unnatural dictates to myself about how much I will allow myself to influence her.  These issues will get more complicated as she grows older, but, so far, I am at peace with this aspect of our relationship.

Ok, it’s not that bad, but it sucks nevertheless.

I guess we were due for a bad vacation.  The last 4 or 5 have been wonderful.  But this is beginning to rival our trip to Disneyworld, when we could not get out of the hotel room.  No, ok, it’s not even that bad, but it sucks nevertheless.

I am now holed up in my bedroom while Adam and his parents enjoy the evening and the hot tub.  I have no desire to be around people or to make the effort of getting my bathing suit on.

Sam will not stop pooping in her pants.  She pooped in her pants 7 times today.  I am not exaggerating in any way.  She also peed in her pants a few of those times, and there was one independent peeing incicent that brought the total accidents to 8.  I only brought 8 pairs of underwear with us, and I’ve already thrown 2 away.  We just put her very last clean shirt and pants on her to sleep in.  Thank god she wears a diaper to sleep at night or we would have been completely out of underwear.  We’ve done a few loads of laundry prior to today and I don’t even know how many we’ve done today because Adam took over at some point.  We’ve changed her clothes on city streets without thinking twice about it.  Poop has fallen on the floor and I’ve simply forgotten to clean it up any further than to pick it up with a tissue and plop it in the toilet.  She pooped in her swim diaper on Friday (and I wasn’t planning on needing any swim diapers since she is supposedly potty trained) and as I was tearing it open, the diaper slipped and poop flew across the room, including into my face.

This reminds me of those newborn days, when you just seem to be swimming in feces all the time.

Speaking of swimming, that is supposed to be what we are doing here, but Sam is now banned from the pool.  After her 5th (I think) accident today, she promised that she would not poop in the swim diaper, but she only lasted about 10 minutes before she did.

I’m losing my freaking mind here.  I don’t know how much poop can possibly be in there.  I mean, it’s literally like, the moment we clean her up, she does it again. 

I am not enjoying my time with Adam’s parents because all I can think about or talk about is the poo.   There have been a few times where we had a few problem-free hours, but even then, I’m just waiting for the next series of accidents.

We have one vacation day left.  We’re planning to go to the beach tomorrow.  Sam and I went to the beach, just the 2 of us, on Friday, and had no problems.  We went to the beach yesterday and she was fine, even through dinner at a restaurant afterwards, where she used the potty.  So I’m hoping she will be fine again tomorrow.  If she pooped in the ocean, I don’t think I’d really care, as long as she doesn’t do it in her bathing suit.

I have 3 theories about why this is happening.  First, I regressed into occasionally asking if she needed to use the potty.  We were in airports, and heading out on long trips to the beach, so I felt like I had to give her a heads up that she needed to think about going.  We had just started making progress at home with me never, under any circumstances, saying a word about going to the potty.  She even had one accident free day!  So the reminders probably kicked off the problems. 

Next, when I am on vacation, especially when I am staying at somebody else’s house instead of a hotel, I have a very hard time with the logistics of life.  Where do I put the poopy baby wipes?  Which trash can should I use to throw away the underwear?  How many different piles of dirty laundry are there and where are they and should I do a load now or wait for the inevitable next accident in an hour?  So I’m getting extremely stressed out by the accidents.  At home, I know what to do and how to clean up.  Here, each accident seems like an hour-long ordeal.  I’m at the point where I’m saying things like, “What is wrong with you?” and “You’ve got to stop this, you are driving me crazy!”  So Sam is getting the negative feedback which I think is the main cause of this whole thing.

Finally, we have dropped our routine since we are on “vacation.”  Sam is eating what I consider to be junk food (cereal, crackers, fruit, and desserts), she is not sitting down for regular meals, and she has missed a couple of naps.  I so badly want a break from our routine (which is the relentless work of a professional parent) and there are 3 other adults around to take up the slack, that I figured I could just let things happen.  Sam could eat what and when she wanted and if she missed nap, no big deal.  Well, I’m paying the price now. 

I guess if I want a vacation, I have to line up someone to actually take care of Sam, not to just be around as backup.  It’s the same problem at home.  I look forward to Adam being home because I figure I’ll have a break, but if I don’t physically leave the house, I’m still on duty.

I really just want to go home.  I want to write off this entire experience as a total loss and get back to work on this problem at home.  What a terrible waste.