So, I originally thought I was going to be doing a FKB in November, and started writing something up. Then, someone else did one, and I sort of forgot about it, and now I’m up for reals. But, since I wrote up a bit of a post a few months ago, I though it’d be interesting to see how things have changed in the past three months. This was a pretty enlightening exercise for me, seeing how much things have changed in what seems like such a short period of time. Then again, to a 2 year old, 3 months is a pretty substantial chunk of his life, so maybe I shouldn’t be quite so surprised. To try to make it clearer which section is from which time, I put what I wrote in November in normal font, and today’s in italics.
(As a background, we have two boys; one is 4.5, and the other just turned 2 in January.)
Then vs. Now
Then: In general, they are both great kids. The older one is amazingly helpful to us and his brother, and rarely does much to cause any big problems. Of course there are things that could be better (still having frequent accidents and lying are the two biggest), but he’s always been such an easy kid to deal with. I see how he acts compared to his classmates in preschool, and am constantly amazed at how mature he acts.
Now: It took a very long time to get to this point, but the frequent accidents from our 4-year-old seem to be mostly done. In November he was still having accidents at least 3-4 days per week at school, but today it almost never happens. I had always hoped we could wait this out, and turns out we did. As for the lying, that also seems to have been a bit of a phase. I think he figured out at some point that he could sometimes get away with not telling the truth, and was sort of testing it out for a while.
Then: However, lately we’ve been having a lot of difficulty with our almost 2-year old. Whenever he gets bored, or we aren’t paying attention to him, he acts out. That includes throwing things, dumping everything from a bookshelf onto the floor, intentionally hurting his older brother, just general crappy kid stuff.
Now: This seems to have mostly passed as well. He still certainly has his momentary tantrums, but they are now far less often, and far less destructive. His newest move is to pour his (or his brother’s) cup of water out on the floor or table. Certainly annoying to have to clean up, but not that terrible a thing to do.
Then: Plus, bedtime has become a huge problem, which I could believe is the cause of these issues, or an effect of the same phase. As recently as 2-3 weeks ago, bedtime with the young one was so easy. We’d read him a book, lay him in bed, turn on his music box, and he’d go to sleep. Easy as pie. Then, for whatever reason, everything changed. Instead of going to sleep, he would open his door, bang the door against the wall, and yell. There’s a baby gate in front of his door, so he can’t get out, but he sure can be a huge pain. We had already put up the little door stoppers that attach onto the hinge of the door, so that he couldn’t actually hit it into the wall. Well, he managed to push the door hard enough to break a hole in the hollow door, which then allowed him to break a large hole in the drywall with the door handle. Good times on that one.
Now: We’ve adjusted bed time regimens, and it has certainly helped. Rather than leaving right after reading him a book, we stay with him for a while. The downside is we now end up laying in his room for 20-30 minutes most nights, waiting for him to fall asleep. It still beats holes getting punched into the wall, but I’d rather not be spending that much time sitting in there, waiting for him to finally go down. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to keep improving this part of our day-to-day routine, and hopefully getting where we can leave while he’s still awake.
Then: I’m pretty sure these bedtime tantrums will pass (hey look, I was right!), but I worry a bit about how we are dealing with it. It seems like between my wife and I, there is always at least one of us that has been stretched to (or past) our limits. That leads to too much yelling, too much anger, and too much escalation, which of course never helps the situation. When we’re both available, we do a pretty good job of tagging the other one out when we see that they’re in too deep, but that’s of course not always possible. Dealing with this, along with a ton of extra duties at work, have stretched us both pretty thin. It’s almost the end of the semester (my wife and I are both professors), so I can at least see the end in sight. But while we’re in it, I know I’ve been too quick to anger, and I don’t like the way things go after that.
Now: This is still an issue, but we’re getting better at it. The triggers have changed, but I still feel like we don’t deal with our emotions as well as we could. We’ve both been frustrated to no end by both kids just flat out ignoring us lately. Having to say everything over and over just eventually drains me, and leads to poor results for everyone. My wife and I are both making a big conscious effort to get more/better sleep, and I feel like this is helping. If we can keep up this better sleep schedule, hopefully we’ll be able to keep ourselves from getting quite so overwhelmed.
Well, I feel like I’ve rambled on enough, and hopefully others will find this retro account interesting, too. For me, writing this all out helps me remember a bit better that, whatever is going on with the kids now is temporary. For better or worse, things will change.
every snowflake is unique, but the general developmental process is the same for every one. Also, dynamics!
really, there's nothing like having a second kid to teach us how little we thought we knew we really did know about kids and parenting.
This wasn't put up on Thursday, so I can't read it...
Kidding. Man do I know how much escalation sucks and how quickly it can happen. That's my biggest problem as a parent (and, coincidentally, I've become skilled in drywall patching and interior door replacement.) My kids are almost the same ages as yours (my boy is six months older) but they are their temperaments are in the opposite to yours. My daughter is feisty and strong willed and way too much like me. I think my boy became laid back and agreeable almost because he had to.
But yeah, repeating myself over and over is one of the things that really gets to me. The biggest challenge is that, when I get really upset, both my daughter and my wife push my buttons so it's really hard to calm down. I try to remove myself, but our house isn't big enough to go somewhere that I can't hear what is going on. I'm hoping warmer weather will help with that.
All I know for sure is that life is frustrating as hell and a combination of a crappy work environment (Hopefully to be remedied soon), significant debt, and certain annoying incidents with bricks is making it hard to be a calm, understanding parent. I need to try harder, but man, how in the world did we survive as a species?
I hear you, brother. Both of my kids take after me in significant ways, and the Girl, in particular, is highly opinionated and uber-stubborn and had a tremendous ability to push my buttons. (the Boy less so, but definitely took up my smartassery). But at the same time, the Girl is/was very sensitive. We'd be in the midst of an intense intellectual conversation/argument when, all of a sudden, water works might bust out. GUILT TRIPPIN'!!!!111one111!!!
the bigger issue for me over the last 4-5 years though was her stubbornness and argumentativeness about picayune issues. Too many days, it would seem like the moment I stepped in the house after work she would start picking at a scab, itching for a fight with me.
somehow, the Mrs was much better able to let a lot of the Girl's antics roll off her back rather than get engaged with them. Because my involvement usually meant escalation and tears.
thankfully, things have improved markedly in her life now that she's in college (and not bored stiff by both school and stupid high school/junior high social crap). Being with her peeps has improved her life (and our relationship, which is great) immensely.
Thank you for saying this because it sounds so similar to what is going on here that it makes me feel better going forward.
Did someone say pie? 😉
I love the then-and-now format; it really captures that experience of seemingly intractable issues diminishing into nothing . . . only to be replaced with different seemingly intractable issues.
My boys are 5.5 and 2.5, so this is all very familiar. Getting out the door in the morning, mealtimes, betimes, etc., often feel like an exercise in negotiating chaos. Just after Christmas, the boys went through an phase of purposely trying to hurt each other. The jalapeño (the older boy) hates when I yell, and while I'm not quick to anger, seeing a kid hurting another one really gets me. We gave a bunch of time-outs any time either boy went after the other, and within a couple weeks it had passed.
I recently re-read part of the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, and it was helpful to me in reminding myself of some good strategies for how to deal with frustrating issues. It really helps that my older boy is able to talk through things now, as long as it's not in the heat of the moment. I like to get him involved in brainstorming ways we can solve problems together.
As far as button-pushing goes, I see that regularly with the jalapeño and Mr. NaCl. The usual result is that Mr. NaCl gets so mad, he leaves the scene. While it's probably better than him staying and exploding in anger, it means that I'm solo with both kids during all the most difficult moments.
Thankfully we haven't had any kid-kid violence. The oldest has yet to even touch the baby yet. He does, however, get extremely excited with the cats. It's been a struggle to control the chasing, the aggressive "petting", or him wanting the cats to do what he wants (me too pal). It's improved but always something new. Yesterday he threw a ball that bounced off one of the cat's head. Certainly doesn't help that cat has no sense of self-preservation. "Oh, giant toddler jumping and wildly swinging his arms inches from me? I'll just look the other way."
We have had similar issues with the little one and our two dogs; he's just trying to play with them, but his play is a lot rougher than they will put up with. I keep waiting for one of them to nip at him, but so far they've managed to put up with his shenanigans. It probably helps that the dogs are older and slower, and got used to having children around with a much calmer, gentler kid first.
Ours went through a phase of injuring each other, too, but it was always the younger one hurting the older one, almost never the other way around. Whenever the now two year old would get bored, he'd pinch, scratch, or pull hair. That phase unfortunately coincided with a driving trip from California to Oregon, Yellowstone, Minnesota, and back, and in order to fit everything in the car they had to be seated right next to each other. We eventually had to put a cardboard barrier between them to make it stop. Thankfully, that phase seems to have mostly passed.
You can't let them steal your time too easily; laying with them an extra 30 minutes is essentially rewarding the bad behavior. Spontaneous rewards are nice. If they enjoy their reading time at night, "Hey, you went to bed pretty well last night -- let's read one more book tonight!" Next thing you know, "I was pretty good last night, can we read another book?"* Plus, reading!
*in theory, and we know how far that goes