This has been the month of tantrums. Up until this point, a tantrum for Poppy would just be whining, which might eventually lead to crying. Now she has a full blown routine - first she freezes, tucks her head down, sometimes she'll kneel and put her head on the floor, and starts crying. Luckily this only lasts for a few seconds - until she can see that we are walking away from her, and then she usually snaps right out of it, but it does happen often. Like all day long. But I know that tantrums for her age can be a lot worse, so I'm thanking my lucky stars that hers are so short and easily put out. And at what age have you guys started with "time-out"? We have tried time-out with her off and on for the past couple of months, but I just feel like she has absolutely no concept of it, to the point where it's not even worth it.
This has also been my first month back to work. And that has meant A LOT of changes around here. She is doing absolutely awesome with all of her daycare situations. She has pretty much stopped crying when we drop her off in the morning which is such a relief for me. Before she would usually only cry for a minute or two anyways, but I'm glad that she has gotten used to us leaving and is ok with it now. We did hit a rough patch with our morning routines - all of a sudden Poppy just started crying about EVERYTHING all morning long. She didn't want her diaper changed, to get dressed, or sit down for breakfast and was basically crying all morning long- which was a miserable start to everyone's day. Of course, I blamed this all on myself for going back to work, and I thought it was all adoption-related. One day I was venting all of this to my friend Natalie, who's daughter is just about Poppy's same age, and she told me that they went through the same thing a couple of weeks ago and she started waking up 20 minutes earlier each day and sitting with her daughter and just cuddling and reading books before they started their routine, and she said that it worked wonders. So the very next morning I dragged my bum out of bed 20 minutes early and Poppy and I sat in her rocking chair and read about 20 books and just cuddled and giggled and then started our morning routine. It was like a miracle! She was immediately back to her happy little self. Can you even believe what an easy solution that was? And it was such a huge reminder to myself that not every issue we have is going to be adoption-related, and that most of the time it is going to just be developmental changes she is going through. Of course, I don't think I will ever be able to leave the whole adoption factor out of the equation, but it is nice to have friends with kids the same age and just be able to say, "oh, Poppy has been going through the same changes." You know what I mean?
On a lighter, she also loves playing with all things Melissa and Doug, especially her sushi and ice cream sets. It's so much fun to watch how her imagination develops. You can tell that being at daycare with other kids is definitely having an impact on her ability to play. She's a little less shy and just plays more - which is awesome. We are going back to the Museum of Play in a couple of weeks and it will be interesting to see how different it is for her this time around. She had a good time before, but I think she'll like it even more now.
We are going on vacation next month and I am dying to bust out her summer clothes. I had her try on a pair of pants from last summer and they were floods. Hopefully a few of her dresses from last year will still fit her though. And I've already started stocking up on new dresses for this summer. Oh, I can't wait for summer dresses! And sorry, I've been super lame about taking pictures lately. Maybe the weather will be nice this week and I'll be inspired to take my camera out more often.
2 comments:
I absolutely *love* your friend's solution to Poppy's morning meltdowns. What a simple, yet wonderful, way to make everyone happy!
As for the time-outs. My two cents (feel free to ignore). On one hand, I like Supernanny's (I know I'm a dork) approach of putting a child on a "naughty mat/chair/etc" for the # of mins. equal to their age (so, in Poppy's case, 1 minute). At the end of that minute, you tell the child why she was placed there, ask her to apologize and then give her a big hug and move on.
On the other hand, we were told by our attachment therapist that consequences should always draw your child IN to you, not away. So, still give her a timeout, but be nearby or at least in the same room.
One thing we've done that seems to work really well, and actually teaches Olive something, is to practice the right behavior with her. For example, say she walks up to one of our cats and hits him. We, in a disappointed voice, say, "oh no. we don't hit kitties. we pet them gently." Then we take her hand and guide her through gentle petting. USUALLY what happens after that is she'll do the gentle pet without our hands guiding her. And she'll do it a couple times, looking at us with this big grin, wanting our approval.
Whew! Sorry to blab on and on. Again, feel free to disregard my advice... :)
I love reading the updates! I agree with the time out advice. I think you should stay in the room and just put the child there for a minute or two (even less if you feel she "gets it"). But if it doesn't work for Poppy I wouldn't even bother. Also, I 100% agree with modeling positive behavior, I have found that it definitely works. I have noticed that Claire picks up on EVERYTHING we do, so modeling is soooo important. And yes, I will be needing more pictures please.
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