Children & Chocolate and Other Paths to God

- I caught Miss A repeatedly shoving the baby off a chair because she was sitting on Tubby (the I.F.)
- When I was trying to use a star chart to encourage desirable bedtime behaviour, at one point during our struggle, Miss A declared between sobs ”Momma…it’s…just…so…hard…to…do…a…chart…” at which point I had to laugh…
- When I told her I had a surprise for her if she was good and stayed in bed, she calmly told me that “I’m not going to be good right now, but maybe tomorrow I’ll sink about it, okay?”
- When I started to get frustrated with her this morning for taking toys away from her sister, she told me that I couldn’t put her in time-out because she was invisible.

You just can’t argue with pre-school logic.

I’m reading an interesting book my sister-in-law gave me on children’s developmental stages - and it’s divided by ages. The author’s approach was much like Jane Goodall’s study of gorillas - meaning that as much as you like to think your child is one of a kind, there are certain age-related traits inherent to all children.

And supposedly the half years (18mths, 2 1/2, 3 1/2, 4 1/2, etc…) are times of disharmony, and the full years are times of harmony. Which means that since my girls have the same birthdays, that my life will be six months of heaven, followed by six months of hell, for the rest of my life. Awesome

What I did find to be helpful, was that this scientific approach leads you to believe that you will have a much easier time of things if you stop fighting the stage your children are at (ie, trying to exert control for control’s sake, something we’ve all done…), and just learn to enjoy the quirks that each 6 month stage brings. And it’s important to remember that the strategies that work when a child is say 4, will not work at 5, but by then the issue you’re trying to “fix” may have resolved itself anyway. (this isn’t to say that you don’t discipline, but that you pick your battles by recognizing what is behind totally age appropriate behavior).

So while I still have the ordinary daily struggles with my children, I’m not as stressed out about them. I’m learning to take the lead from them on what the day will hold, and I’m just trying to enjoy the extreme silliness that living with an 18-month-old and a 4-year-old can bring, because they won’t be this age long!