Smiling Mom

Seve­ral years back I thought I knew everything about parenting.

OK, let’s be honest, most of the time I still pre­tend know everything…but I digress.

My son was extre­mely easy to potty train.  So easy, in fact, that by the time he was 2 years and 4 months old he was wea­ring big boy undies during the day and was dry most every night.

Nice, right?  Well, then came my daugh­ter.  She was also day potty trai­ned by two and a half.  But night­time trai­ning was a whole dif­fe­rent story.

Claire sleeps.  Like really sleeps during the night.  There’s no waking her.  And although this is great in so many ways, it is rot­ten when it comes to her abi­lity to recog­nize her body’s cues during the late hours of the night.

Fast for­ward to February.  Claire had recently tur­ned four and was still hap­pily wea­ring her large pull-ups to bed each night.

One day we acci­den­tally ran out of those damn absor­bent pads for­cing night­time potty trai­ning upon us.

Hold me now.

At an utter loss as to what to do, I reached out and asked for help.  I sent a mes­sage to one of my high school friends who has potty trai­ned all six of her dar­ling chil­dren. I asked what she did with any of her reluc­tant night­time potty trainers.

Here’s what she said:  For both of her difficult-to-train chil­dren, she deci­ded to take the dia­pers off all together and equip the bed with those potty pads.  She said she pre­pa­red her­self for a month of nightly sheet chan­ging.  At the end of the month, both children’s bodies had adjus­ted to the new rou­tine and there were no more accidents.

While men­tally pre­pa­ring for this month-long pee fest I found myself goo­gling varia­tions of the phrase, “night­time potty trai­ning” again and again.  On one blog post a woman was asking for advice and help trai­ning her daugh­ter.  A lady who had found suc­cess in an odd way left an obs­cure com­ment on her post.  (I wish I still had the link..)

Here’s what she said:  She suc­cess­fully potty trai­ned her daugh­ter by (get this) inc­rea­sing her daughter’s water intake during the day.  Let me say this again… She made her daugh­ter drink more water during the day.

Crazy, right?

Well she went on to say that she rea­li­zed her daugh­ter was never really fee­ling that “I gotta pee really bad” sen­sa­tion and the­re­fore her body never lear­ned which musc­les were nee­ded to “hold it”.  When that sen­sa­tion hap­pe­ned at night, her body did not know how to respond.

Something in her com­ment reso­na­ted with me.

I was super­mom with son and always made sure he was hydrated…But my daugh­ter?  Not so much.

My Plan:

Star­ting in the mor­ning I requi­red Claire to drink as much water as pos­si­ble, refi­lling her cup as many times as neces­sary.  I became vigilant.

After four o’clock, liquids were off limits with the excep­tion of a small glass of water directly after dinner.

At night­time I’d have her go to the bath­room two to three times prior to laying down, ensu­ring that she appro­pria­tely drai­ned her bladder.

I’d take her to the bath­room just before I went to sleep.

I pre­pa­red for a month long ‘battle’, so to speak, by making her bed with two water­proof mat­tress pads and two bot­tom sheets and one addi­tio­nal water­proof pad directly under her body.

Claire, true to form, began peeing her­self with regu­la­rity.  We (both Claire and I) chan­ged her sheets and paja­mas when that happened.

After two weeks, as if by some sort of miracle, Claire was dry almost every sin­gle night.

Dry.

Nightly.

Ama­zing.

Now I’m a belie­ver.  Once Claire was for­ced into the potty dance during the day, her body began recog­ni­zing the cues at night and res­pon­ded by not allo­wing her to relieve her­self all over her sheets.

Now it’s your turn.  Send me your paren­ting ques­tions and I’ll let you know what’s been effec­tive for me.

Hey, I’m over at Sili­con Valley Moms Blog today tal­king about my newest paren­ting tac­tics.  This one is pos­sibly a bit controversial…

So, we’ve resor­ted to buying a nasty tas­ting nail polish for our daugh­ter.  She just won’t stop suc­king her thumb.  Don’t judge me. I tried, I mean really tried to do this using only intrin­sic, and some­ti­mes extrin­sic moti­va­tion.  We’ve tried band aids on the thumbs… We’ve tried dolls, with strings attached.  We’ve tried tal­king to her about being a ‘big girl’.  To read more head on over!

Recently Miche­lle and I had a play-date at a local park.  Since neither of us could find a baby­sit­ter, we deci­ded to let our chil­dren tag along. Heh!

The con­ver­sa­tion quickly tur­ned to our all things kid inc­lu­ding tan­trums and nego­tia­ting.  The big ques­tion that we kept coming back to was, “How much nego­tia­ting is too much?”  If I ask my four year old to put away his socks, for the fourth time, and he tells me to wait because he’s hel­ping his sis­ter put on her dolly’s clothes, should I wait?  He’s got a point, he’s doing something to help out his sister.

If I say it’s time to to turn off the movie and he tells me he will when the scene is over, is that ok?

Rai­sing a four year old is so dif­fe­rent than rai­sing a youn­ger child.  Not all con­ver­sa­tions are as black and white.  You now have to deal with a thin­king, TALKING, nego­tia­ting little person.

My ans­wer to the ques­tion, “How much nego­tia­ting is too much?” came at the tur­ning point of BC’s tan­trum phase.  My dad was in town and knew my hus­band and I were at a loss as to what to do with our son’s beha­vior.  We thought we were paren­ting pretty con­sis­tently.  But I have to say that having a fresh set of eyes in our house for three days, watching all our paren­ting moves was a true bles­sing.  He was able to see just where the break­down in our stra­te­gies occurred.

One scene that he obser­ved went something like this:

Me: BC turn off the com­pu­ter.  I war­ned that if you hit your sis­ter again, you’d be done with the game.

BC: (Intense stare, not budging)

Me: If you don’t turn off the com­pu­ter, then I will.

BC (Intense stare, heals dig­ging into floor)

Me: (Wal­king over to com­pu­ter, shut­ting off the game)

BC: (Sta­ying put at the desk, not bud­ging or compl­ying.  Just not pla­ying the game.)

During this whole event, I did all the work.  First I told my son to turn off the com­pu­ter, then rea­li­zing that he wasn’t bud­ging and fea­ring an all out war, I chan­ged my strategy.

Essen­tially what I did was create uncer­tainty.  My son could not pre­dict with 100% accu­racy the of out­come of his actions, so he rolled the dice, and won.

My beha­vior and actions were crea­ting his sub-par behavior.

As my father and I were tal­king he brought up this exam­ple to me.

As a teacher I go along my day with my stu­dents, just as happy as can be.  The stu­dents have choi­ces and I allow them a lot of lee­way, as long as they are on task.  But the minute they diso­bey, fall off task, or step over the accep­ta­ble line, all nego­tia­tion and addi­tio­nal pri­vi­le­ges stop.  They must head back to their desks.  Period.

Why was I not appl­ying these stra­te­gies to my own parenting?

Ulti­ma­tely, I knew the answer.

Fear.

I had given my power to the four year old tyrant living in my home.

It was at this moment when I said to myself, “This is not a democ­racy.  What I say goes, or there will be consequences.”

The next time my son told me no, he would not follow my direc­tions, I wal­ked over to him, got eye level and said with the most serious voice and facial expres­sion I could mus­ter, “You WILL follow my direc­tions, or you WILL go to time out.”  And I sta­red.  I did not break eye contact.

He rea­li­zed the shift in my paren­ting, and reluc­tantly complied.

Not only did this shift all but end the tan­trums.  But kno­wing the con­se­quen­ces to his actions with 100% cer­tainty also, ama­zingly enough, allo­wed my son to breathe again.  It was like he was a new kid again.  The smile retur­ned to his face and his happy atmosphere retur­ned to our house.

Kids crave boun­da­ries.  A lack of boun­da­ries crea­tes uncer­tainty.  Uncer­tainty crea­tes con­fu­sion.  Con­fu­sion crea­tes fear.  Fear crea­tes an unsafe fee­ling.  Kids who feel unsafe act out.  Acting out crea­tes tan­trums.  Tan­trums are HELL for parents!!

My son and daugh­ter have mul­ti­ple choi­ces throughout the day.  They choose their clothes, what they want for break­fast, and where and how they play, just to name a few.  But the one thing they no lon­ger choose is when and how they to pay atten­tion to our rules.

In times of dis­tress, our house is not a democ­racy.  It’s a dictatorship.

Things  have become inc­rea­singly cal­mer around our house lately.  Thank God.  The stress of this past month has been enough to nearly knock us out.

Let me back up.  We’ve been dea­ling with some pretty shoc­king 4 year old tan­trum beha­vior from our son.  It star­ted back in August, just a month after his fourth birth­day.  I imme­dia­tely began researching (thank God for Goo­gle!!) tan­trum beha­viors, anxiety, and just about anything I could find rela­ted to the sub­ject.  The results were mini­mal.  Not much seems to be writ­ten about this stage in life.

BC’s beha­vior and the root cause of why he was acting out con­su­med us.  It’s all we tal­ked about.  Not kno­wing why was about as hard as not kno­wing how to stop the actual beha­viors.  I star­ted reaching out to friends.  Asking if they dealt with simi­lar pro­blems when one of their chil­dren was four.

The resoun­ding answer?

Yes.

Most every mom I spoke to had or has a child going through this phase.  With this rea­li­za­tion, about 10 pounds lif­ted off my shoulders.

My son is not bro­ken.  He’s testing.

I can deal with tes­ting.  Bro­ken?  No.  Tes­ting, abso-freaking-lutely!

Once we rea­li­zed the root of BC’s tan­trum beha­vior was a strug­gle for power I was able to jump into action.

Tan­trums at our house hap­pe­ned gene­rally during three dif­fe­rent times.

1. School Drop-Off

During the drop off at school BC’s beha­vior went from sweet, loving, and out­going to horri­ble, thrashing tan­trum beha­vior.  We called ahead to the school, let them know of the new deve­lop­ments and crea­ted a plan with the teachers.  We’d bring BC to school (kic­king and screa­ming) and the teachers would peal him out of our arms.  We’d quickly say goodbye and leave.

And then I’d cry.

Each day we applied this tech­ni­que, it took a total of 10–15 minu­tes before he was calm and pla­ying with the other kids happily.

This las­ted for 4 class ses­sions.  At that point, BC deci­ded to attend school hap­pily.  Phew!!

2. Time Outs

One day BC deci­ded that he would not sit on a time out any lon­ger.  This is when all nego­tia­tions in our house came to an end.  He must obey.  We attemp­ted the Super­nanny tech­ni­que of put­ting the child back to time out without any eye con­tact, emo­tion, or communication.

This was hard.  I got mad.  I was tired.  So was my son.

But I did it.  The first time it took 57 minu­tes of con­ti­nuously put­ting him back on time-out. There a LOT of screa­ming, crying, kic­king etc. before he’d stay.  But he stayed.

This was by far the har­dest thing I’d ever done.  But I did it and it made each addi­tio­nal time-out we dealt with so much easier.

The next time-out took 17 minu­tes of ‘put backs’ before he stayed.

That was the last time he tes­ted so seve­rely during his time-outs.

3.  Bedtime/Nighttime

This was the har­dest tan­trum for us to break.  First we were very con­cer­ned because we knew that our son was effec­ted by my grandmother’s death this sum­mer.  Her fune­ral was the first time he saw me cry.  He knew my  grandma and mis­sed her terribly.  The night­time rou­tine became tor­tu­rous for us.  It began to take about an hour to put BC down, and there were still no gua­ran­tees that our tac­tics would work.  Half the nights ended in a full blown hour-long tan­trum as we attemp­ted to leave the room.  By the end of the fit, we were sit­ting with/ laying with/ hol­ding our son.

Totally inef­fec­tive.

This was our final fron­tier.  We had to move past the night­time tan­trum in order to be freed from this horri­ble weight that was effec­ting our entire family.

We finally deci­ded that enough was enough.  I let BC know that then next time he didn’t stay in bed at night­time he’d be put back to bed over and over again until he sta­yed.  In addi­tion, I would not talk to him.

At 12:30 a.m. a follo­wing day the tan­trum began.  In Super­nanny fashion, I said, “It’s bed­time dar­ling.”  and pla­ced him in bed.

The second time he got up, I firmly said, “It’s bedtime.”

The third through the 75^th time he got out of bed, kic­king, screa­ming, etc. I simply pic­ked him up, put him on his mat­tress without a word or eye contact.

He was pissed.

But after 35 minu­tes, he stayed.

That epi­sode was well over a week ago and the last time we had a tan­trum in our house.

Help­ful Tip:

If I could sug­gest anything to you as you go through this phase it would be to com­ple­tely dis­con­nect, emo­tio­nally during these episodes.

If you don’t, you may hurt your child, inad­ver­tently, or make the tan­trum worse and last lon­ger by reacting.

Dis­con­nect and pre­pare for a long, drawn out fit.  Because when you decide to change your beha­vior, your child will push har­der to get what he wants.

Dis­con­nect.  Then recon­nect when the epi­sode is over.

——————–

Thus conc­lu­des my first epi­sode of Lear­ning Through Expe­rience!  Stay tuned for the next epi­sode when I say, “This is NOT a democ­racy!”

——————–

If you liked this post, you may also like my post on Night­time Potty Trai­ning.