Parenting pop quiz

Parenting is just one test after another. It really isn't fair. Once you feel like you finally figured it all out, something happens and you realize you know nothing.

This week's test? How to get a 2-year-old to stop hanging out with the wrong crowd.

It sounds a lot funnier than it is.

It seems that at the tender age of 2, Sophia has fallen in with the wrong crowd at school. She’s picked an extremely strong-willed counterpart to spend her days with at daycare. This little girl and Sophia are trouble together. Sophia has started pushing the other kids, ripping apart books and hiding the pieces and talking back to the teachers. In a matter of one week, Sophia has gone from a bright shining bundle of joy to a screaming bundle of something that is definitely not joy.

Yikes. I guess the terrible 2's have hit full force.

So, we are starting behavior modification training. Yes, that’s right, on a 2-year-old. I don’t know what else to do. She’s hitting, screaming and now getting in trouble at school, I have to do something because, you know, doing something is better than doing nothing.

We have a chart that looks a little like this …

Once it’s properly filled out, it will have a list of goals for her to do each day. They way it’s supposed to work is for every goal she completes, she gets a token and at the end of the day she can use the tokens to purchase a reward from a “treasure box.” At the end of the week, if she does so much, she will get a reward. Being that she’s 2, we had to modified the program a little to make it (hopefully) easier for her to understand. Her not having a real concept of time kind of makes this a little unfair, so our modifications started with making it a daily reward system and removing the token-purchasing power.

Sophia’s goals include staying in her own bed all night, eating all her breakfast, keeping her shoes and socks on in the car (don’t ask) and getting fishes (rewards for good behavior) at daycare. She will put a sticker next to each goal she accomplished every day. At the end of the day, if she has more stickers than not (we have yet to determine the exact number needed), she will get a special treat from her own “treasure box.”

In keeping with the spirit of fairness, Ryan will have his own chart so he can feel like he’s part of the process. Of course, his goals will be tailored to what he can actually do at 15 months. By including him, we’re also hoping to encourage a little competition in Sophia so she wants to do meet her goals every day.

Honestly, I have no idea if it will work or not, but it’s worth a shot, right?

I hope so.

Feeling great about being wrong

It's not every day that I feel so happy about being wrong. After having a long conversation with Sophia's teacher, that's exactly how I feel.

In recent weeks, I've been worried about biting and the hierarchy of her daycare class and after talking about this with my husband, I decided today to ask Sophia's teacher to call me at her convenience so we could talk about her behavior.

When she called this afternoon, I was fully prepared to have a conversation about how we can do more at home to help Sophia stop her biting, but what I got was exactly the opposite. I started the conversation asking about the dynamics of her classroom. I asked if biting was a problem throughout the class and if Sophia was the ringleader because I felt a lot of emphasis was placed on her biting and asked how we could get a handle on it.

I am proud to say the teacher said Sophia was not the ringleader and, in fact, she was one of the most unaggressive children in the class. She said Sophia's biting has actually decreased in the last couple of months. She said Sophia was actually doing very well and I shouldn't be concerned.

She told me at this age the children are learning how to communicate and sometimes they get frustrated and bite. She did say that the behavior was not appropriate, but she didn't think any of the biting was so bad that it was a problem. She also said some of the more aggressive children were the older ones and they were moving up to the next class next week. She said she thought their aggression came from them being bored in the younger classroom.

It seemed like every day I picked up Sophia from daycare a teacher would comment about her biting, they'd mention that she didn't bite today, or that she did, and that gave me the impression Sophia's behavior was of concern; otherwise, why would they be bringing it up everyday? I think they were bringing it up because of my own concern about her biting.

I don't understand the whole biting thing. To me, it seems so weird that anyone would have a reaction to bite someone because they took a toy away from them or they didn't want to play with them. If I was upset at my co-worker and bit them, I'm sure there would be a lawsuit to follow. (Watch, my mom will read this and tell me that I was a problem biter as a child!)
Either way, I feel much better about my own daughter's behavior. I know that Sophia is not an alpha female and there is no power struggle in her daycare. I also know there is no biting problem in the class and that Sophia is not overly aggressive.

I probably could have known all of this earlier had I talked to the teachers more closely. I thought I was close to the teachers and that I was keeping the lines open, but sometimes it takes more than simple conversation to truly understand what's going on in my children's school.

It's a learning experience and I have to take it that way. One day I'm going to have to go to parent-teacher conferences and I'm going to have notes sent home about my son or daughter not doing their homework or whatever. I'd like to be a parent that the teachers know every year in every school. I'd like to know all the teachers on a first name basis and I'd like to have a lot of contact with them. I know this will get harder and harder as my children advance in grades and by high school I probably won't be introduced personally to every teacher, but I'd like to be as involved as possible for as long as possible. That, to me, is what is going to help my children do their best in school.