I am that mother

Every parenting book you pick up talks about how both parents need to act as a single unit. This is foolish. Before everyone gets up in arms, let me explain. My theory is that if two parents start acting like one, you are outnumbered. Even if you have only one child, two parents acting as one gives one child the upper hand because kids always rule. At my house, the one child for each adult tactic is not working and we are entirely overwhelmed.

This Christmas, it became pretty clear to me that my children are spoiled rotten. I don't know how to parent any other way. If they are crying and want something, I can't do anything but give them what they want. I know this will backfire on me and my kids will grow up to be brats, but I can't help it.

Christmas turned Sophia into an evil princess!

It's beginning to feel like every day starts and ends with crying children. Both want to be held all the time and both will turn from sweet, innocent children to demons from hell at a moments notice if they aren't getting what they want. But here's the thing, they are wonderful, well-behaved children for everyone else but us. They eat, play nicely and listen to anyone watching them, but once we show up to pick them up, all hell will break loose and one, if not both, will immediately start acting up. There are days when the teachers at daycare will tell me they had a great day and while I'm walking the kids to the car one will have a tempertantrum because they won't want to leave.

Really.

So, how do you combat screaming, crying, whining and spoiled children? What is your secret to a quiet, fully functioning household?

By the way, the behavior chart is working nicely. Sophia is improving at daycare, but I still can't shake her out of the tempertantrum habit. Ryan, being a good student, is following in her footsteps and throwing his very own tantrums. Yes, I am that woman with the screaming kids in Target and I am very sorry about it.

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.

At least there was no blood

Last week, Sophia and I had a scuffle. I didn't write about it for a number of reasons but after a conversation with Laural from Laural Out Loud (formerly Mamasphere), she convinced me to share the story.

After dinner last Wednesday, Sophia asked to watch Cinderella. We had dinner early, so I said OK and put in the movie. At 7 p.m., I brought Ryan upstairs for his bath and put him to bed while Sophia watched her movie. At 7:20 p.m., I walked down stairs to get Sophia and bring her upstairs for her bath. Cinderella was at the ball dancing with the prince and Sophia wanted to finish the movie. Thinking there wasn't that much movie left, I sat with her and we finished watching Cinderella together.

By the time the movie was over it was 7:45 p.m. It was way passed her bedtime and she was cranky. I did her no favors by letting her finish the movie.

The crying started as I tried to get her undressed. It escalated when I put her in the bathtub. It got worse when I washed her hair and by the end of her bath she was inconsolable. As I put her pajamas on, I decided we'd skip brushing her teeth and put her right to bed. The crying had turned into an ugly mixture of moaning, crying and whining.

"No, I don't want to go to bed," she screamed. "I want you!"

I placed her in bed, but as I was tucking her in, she jumped up and the back of her head hit my face. It took every ounce of will power I had not to freak out. Sophia started screaming even louder, so I took the opportunity to leave her room and shut the door behind me. I needed a couple of seconds to recompose myself and check to see if my teeth were bleeding.

No blood, but my lip was sore. Her screaming intensified while I took a couple of deep breathes and calmed myself. With every ounce of courage and resolve I could muster, I walked back into her room and got her to bed. As I sat next to her bed lulling her to sleep, I put my hand on my lip and actually felt it swelling.

Laural begged me to tell her I took a picture of my swollen lip, but I didn't. I thought about taking a picture of what it looks like today, but sadly (or not) there is little evidence left of the incident, except my bruised ego. There is little worse than getting into a fight with a 2-year-old and losing.

On a different note, Jody Donnelly nominated me for a Butterfly Award.

Thank you, Jody. Now, I'm supposed to nominate at least 7 other blogs, so here you go:

Autumn's Mom

DC Urban Dad

Laural Out Loud

Everybody Has A Story to Tell. This Is Ours

Sassy Irish Lassie

The McMommy Chronicles

Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia - It's crazy, but I'm addicted to this blog.

What a way to end the day

Every night we go through the same routine. It’s a terrible routine and I wish we could stop it, but we just don’t know how. It starts out when we put dinner on the table, that’s when Sophia starts. Pretty much right after she gets in her booster seat, she starts yelling. “Done. Done,” she says as she’s standing up on her chair. Things just escalate from there. The yelling turns to screaming, all the while, Ryan is quietly eating.

Dinner has become a two parent job, one to take care of the “Sophia situation” and the other to feed the baby. Neither Jon nor I actually get to eat anything and we don’t have any idea how to stop it because we would really like to have a nice family dinner.

We’ve tried putting her in Time Out to calm her down (she calms down until we put her back at the table). We’ve tried to let her eat whatever she wants (her dinner becomes a huge buffet of things that never make it in her mouth). We’ve tried just letting her not eat (but how long can a mother not feed her baby? Not long). We’ve tried yelling at her, negotiating with her and pleading with her. We’ve even tried taking her out of the booster seat and letting her sit in a “big girl chair.” Nothing seems to work. She just will not eat at the table. That is until after dinner when, in a desperate attempt to put some kind of food in her little belly, we give her something that she can eat in the living room.

Now this doesn’t happen every single night. We probably have one, maybe two nights a week when she will quietly sit and eat whatever’s in front of her. But those days are few and hard to come by.

I know toddlers are picky, but I’m really concerned that she almost never eats dinner (or breakfast or any meal that we try to put her at the table to eat) and that she’s throwing an almost daily temper tantrum that we, clearly, cannot control. I also know that we are, somehow, creating the situation, but I'm not sure what it is we're doing or what to do to stop creating it. I’m worried that we are creating a family doomed to be on “Supernanny.”

Not ready for 2

On Sunday, Sophia turned 19 months. It may not seem like a big deal, but she is now more than half way to 2 and I am totally not ready.

She has already started to test her boundaries. Last week, I took Sophia and Ryan to our friend’s house to meet her new baby and Sophia was as good as could be expected. Of course, we had a little behavioral breakdown right before we left because she wanted to stand up on the kitchen chairs and, silly me, I didn’t think that was a safe activity for my little girl. So, a little temper tantrum occurred, but it was mild and I didn’t even really think about it until my friend and I started talking about how Sophia was “strong willed and very independent.”

I kind of laughed when I said that Sophia is so strong-willed that most times my husband and I give in well before she gives up. In fact, we try to be very consistent in our discipline, but the truth is that Sophia rules the house. The worst is when I’m correcting her and she starts laughing. I can’t help but laugh. She is so cute that I have to turn my head and make sure she doesn’t see me smile. Somehow, I’m sure my, “Sophia, this is not funny,” isn’t getting through to her.

At the suggestion of my friend, I went online and found a ton of web sites devoted to disciplining the strong-willed child. I’d like to say I will read every one of them so that I can be completely educated on the subject, but the truth is that I don’t really have time to devote to this research, especially since I don’t believe Sophia is a problem.

I think it’s good for Sophia to be strong-willed and independent and to really know what she wants and what she doesn’t want. I like that in her and I think it’s a quality that will be very useful to her as an adult. I love the fact that she is speaking in full sentences at 19 months and I attribute that to her being determined to let us know exactly what she wants. Sometimes it’s a little tough for us to figure out what she wants and she gets frustrated, but she doesn’t freak out or yell at us or get angry, she throws a little tantrum and what 2-year-old doesn’t.

So I say to Sophia, we will continue to set boundaries for you and I’m sure you will continue to test them. It’s only the beginning.