The Mom Crowd

My 6 year recently lost his second tooth.  With the new tooth growing in I became more aware that his thumb sucking really needed to come to an end. Once he started losing teeth I started seeing $$dollar signs$$ about future dental visits and braces and it was very tempting to try and have a more tight fisted attitude about him quitting.  I casually mentioned to him that his teeth would start growing in incorrectly if he kept sucking his thumb and that it was probably a good idea to stop.  He said “okay” and we came up with a plan.  I don’t have a formal chart but we have decided to let him have a special fizzy or juice drink on the weekend if he keeps the thumb out of the mouth during the week.

He started sucking his thumb when he was a baby–around 2 or 3 months old.  As he got a little older, his pattern for sucking his thumb was to hold his blankie, rub the satin on his nose and suck his thumb at the same time.  I was worried that maybe we would have to get rid of his blankie and all things satin since for him, seeing satin was a Pavlovian response: see/touch satin=suck thumb.  He was never the type who would just walk around with his thumb in his mouth or do activities while thumbsucking.  If he got bored he would go to his bed and have some “blankie/thumbsucking time”.  Sometimes, but not always he would suck his thumb before falling asleep.

I think it worked to our favor that we read this book several times when we checked it out from the library: Laurie Keller’s Open Wide: Tooth School Inside. If you have not read this book to your kids I do recommend it.  Our kids learned all about cavities and germs and tooth care from this book.  Laurie Keller has some really GREAT books that our kids LOVE–they have made them giggle and laugh many times.  I digress.

We asked the 6 year old if he could still rub satin on his nose and hold his blankie without sucking his thumb and he said he really thought he could. (Blankie will go away another day). We gave it a try and he did it.  Easy peazy-lemon squeezy as he would say.

I know that getting children to stop sucking their thumbs is not always that easy.  I have a good friend who made a chart for her son while he was in training not to suck his thumb.  He was more inclined to suck him thumb while watching tv or when he was bored.  He didn’t have a pavlovian cue like mine did.  He gets a marshmallow at the end of the day if he succeeds.  Behavior charts seem to work well for kids who are learning how to stop sucking their thumbs.

In general when it comes to behavior change positive rewards work much better than shame and anger.  When it comes time for our 5 year old to stop sucking his thumb I think it won’t be quite as easy.  He is like his brother in that he likes to snuggle with his blankie and suck his thumb but he seems more attached to it than the 6 year old.  Perhaps waiting until he is 6 will make a big difference to him and he will find it as easy as his brother.

Tips for helping children stop sucking their thumbs:

• Behavior and reward charts
• Praise when you see them succeed (catch them doing something right!!)
• Don’t yell or nag
• Remember that peer/social pressures can work to your advantage. Once your children are school age and notice that their friends don’t suck their thumbs they want to less and less.
• If you find they suck more when bored keep a list or box of special activities to do when boredom strikes.
• Stay positive yourself and tell them you know they can do it.
• You can try the gross tasting stuff you paint on the thumb or a thumb guard to help if other methods haven’t worked.

Have any thumbsuckers at your house?  What’s worked for you?  Disasters? How old were your kids when they stopped thumbsucking?

Over the last few months, I have been participating in a study at my church of the book Shepherding a Child’s Heart.  This book has been eye opening to me and I thought I’d share my personal feelings and thoughts about it with all of you. 

The basis of the book is raising your children in a godly biblical way.  So often in our society we are caught up in the pop psychology of child raising that we stray so far away from how we are supposed to raise them.  I personally have tried many of the “tried and true” methods, including a ton of SuperNanny’s tricks and none of them have worked with our son.  Why?  Because they don’t get to the heart… they just focus on getting your child to do what you want them to do.  The main purpose of this book is to get you to focus on the heart and the attitude of the heart, to teach your child that God has placed you as the authority in their life to protect and guide them and that you serve as their authority under God. Once you teach the heart to love and to serve, the behavior changes.  It’s not only teaching your child’s heart, but it teaches your heart along the way. 

Tripp explains the two biblical methods of discipline are the rod (spanking) and communication.  He goes into great depth in explaining the appropriate way to spank and how not spanking puts your child in peril spiritually.  It was difficult for me to read this because my husband and I had decided not to spank because we had seen how upset we got with our son and felt like we didn’t want to spank in anger.  Godly discipline is NEVER done in anger, but in love.  Doing it in love prevents abuse and actually leads you to a stronger relationship with your child.  Since implementing this type of discipline, we have seen how differently we address our child’s behavior and how he is learning that we love him and that is why we aren’t letting “this one go”.  It’s a hard way to parent, but it’s the right way.

Tripp also goes into great detail about why the typical methods of discipline don’t really work and why as our children get older, they will rebel.  It’s really eye-opening!  It’s no wonder children are so rebellious these days and why so many are doing things that we never would have thought of at such a young age.  Parents are taking the easy way out. 

The only negative I have to say about this book is that there isn’t a lot of practical application examples.  However, through the Shepherding the Heart Ministries, a variety of tools with examples that are very helpful are offered.  Ginger Plowmann offers a  great supplemental resource in her Wise Words for Wise Moms chart that gives scripture references in dealing with specific issues.  The book does have review and thought provoking questions at the end of each chapter which are helpful in getting you to really understand the concepts.

All in all, this is a fantastic book written by a father, teacher, counselor and pastor.  With years and years of personal experience, his insight is clear and heartfelt.  He lets you know the struggles his family has had with certain things and he gives examples of how raising your child biblically makes all the difference in the end.  I highly recommend this book to anyone. 

Ephesians 6:4  “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Have you read this book?  Would you recommend it to other parents?

Have you ever dealt with a child who wets the bed?  We are dealing with the issue of bedwetting right now, and I gotta tell you it is stressful.  Our oldest child has trouble staying dry all night.  We had him in pull ups at night until this summer when we decided to give it a go and take off the pull ups.  We would take him pee at night right before we went to bed and he would stay dry the rest of the night.  He was waking up very early because he had to wake up and pee and then couldn’t go back to sleep–but we thought it was great that he was waking up to go.

Then we moved to England.  Once we arrived in Enlgand everything started off fine.  Until school started.  Our oldest is in public school and the adjustment of going to school for 6 hours a day and being very tired by the end of the day made bedwetting a bigger issue.  He was wetting the bed two times a night most nights.  We armed oursevled with washable  puddle pads that we put over his flat sheet so that if he did have an accident we could take that off and replace it with a fresh one.  That way we weren’t having to change sheets in the middle of the night.

Here is his nightly routine:

• Books before bed.
• Last pee of the night
• Lights out and songs.
• Sleep.
• We take him pee before we go to bed sometime between 10 and 12.  We usually try to aim for 10:30 because the chances of him having an accident after 10:30 increase by the minute.
• If we are too late then we change jammies, change the puddle pad and have him empty his bladder.  Occasionally, depending on how he is sleeping the accident may get on his comforter, sheets, or blankie.  Throw those into the kitchen where the washer is so they can be washed the next morning.
• Sometime between 2am and 4:30, whichever parent wakes up first, will take him pee again.  Occasionally we are too late and we have to repeat the above step.
• Rejoice in the morning if he stayed dry all night (and I have no more laundry to do).

Now, this may not be the BEST way to handle bedwetting at night but it works for us for now.  I don’t enjoy having interrupted sleep in the middle of the night and dealing with taking him to the toilet but I dislike even more dealing with wet jammies and extra loads of laundry.

A few weeks ago I was getting concerned that maybe there was something else going on with him–a medical problem.  I started doing some research (talking to other parents and reading on the web) about bedwetting in school age children.

Here is what I learned:

• It is common for boys especially to struggle with bedwetting.
• Some children don’t produce the hormone that supresses the body from making urine at night until they are older.  In some cases, not until puberty.
• It isn’t their fault.  They aren’t doing it on purpose.  They can’t help it.  They aren’t lazy.
• Using things like sticker charts won’t really be helpful because bedwetting is not something that children can control.  It isn’t the same thing as using a sticker chart for thumb sucking or doing chores.
• Use empathy and love when your children have an accident.  Use all your might to not show any anger toward your child if they have an accident.
• Stress makes bedwetting worse.  (In our case starting school was making it worse for our child.  Showing anger and frustration about bedwetting can also make it worse.)
• If you suspect a medical problem, take the child in for a check up and talk to the pediatrician.
• Some websites said that taking them to the toilet at night doesn’t really teach the child anything–it more trains the parent than anything else.
• If your child is old enough for sleepovers you can ask your doctor about a prescription the child can take to not wet the bed.  Or teach your child how to discreetly use pull ups to avoid being embarrassed about needing them at night.
• Encourage your child when he has an accident and tell him he will grow out of it.  (It doesn’t bother our child that he has accidents at night.  He isn’t embarrassed about it for the time being but I suspect that he will get there if this issue doesn’t resolve itself in the next year.)
• Take heart, you aren’t the only parent out there dealing with extra laundry due to bedwetting!

How have you dealt with bedwetting?  What has worked for you?

At the beginning of the summer I wrote this post in response to a reader question about playground bullies and I am glad I wrote it.  After reading all the comments I became a lot more confident in confronting other people’s children and speaking to their parents. I don’t play playground police every time, but I am certainly protective of my little 2 year old daughter, Annabelle.

While my daughter stood in the top of a large play set I noticed a 5 or 6 year old boy hovering and blocking her way on purpose. Then he bent down in her face and yelled. I was horrified! I saw the boy hovering, but she was up in the play set and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think he would scream in her face. She started crying and I coaxed her to another part of the playground for toddlers. The boy followed and was standing close and following again. Every time he came near her she started crying again.  I didn’t hesitate this time and asked him to not yell at my daughter and to play on the big kids play set. Then his grandfather came over and I explained that the boy was screaming in my daughter’s face. He only got defensive and said that he couldn’t watch both his grandsons at the same time. He did seem  overwhelmed with both boys, so I didn’t press it further. If the mother or father had been there I would have pressed the matter. It was very obvious that he was bullying.

In another instance we were at an indoor playground. I was pushing my daughter back and forth in a U shaped foam mat. Three older and larger boys came up and wanted to push her too and were trying to talk to Annabelle. One of the boys was leaning on a foam column and he reached to rock her. She stood and said “No!” and pushed the column he was leaning on. The boy fell and hit his face on the foam column and started crying. I totally laughed at first. I knew the boy was fine. He went to his mom and was crying to her. I went over and explained that he only hit his face on the soft mat column. I was glad that my daughter stood up for herself. These boys may not have intended to be bullies, but I am still befuddled why they would want to play with a 2 year old girl.

Last week there was a 3 or 4 year old boy throwing mulch on the kids as they went down the slide. I went up to him and said, “Hey Little Man, Let’s not throw it on the slide. How about you throw it on the bench or over here?” I was just redirecting him to throw the mulch where no one else was. He looked at me confused and just stopped. One girl came up and thanked me for getting him to stop. I never saw who was his parent, but it made me feel good that not only did I help my child but the other kids on the playground too.

I do not correct other children all the time, but I will say something if I see that my child may get hurt. Don’t be afraid to speak up on the playground!

Original post:

Summer is here and the playgrounds are full (unless you live in Texas and the 100-degree weather makes the slides feel like 150-degrees.) While at the playground your child may encounter bullies. What do you do?

Grace recently emailed us and asked this question about bullying in the playground:

Today at a playground, my 2 (almost 3) year old son was bullied by another toddler around his age.  The boy was throwing things at my son’s head and his mom wouldn’t do anything about it.  I tried to just keep my son away from the boy, but he would just run up to him and smack him in the head and run away.  I decided to confront his mom about it and she just denied it ever happened since she didn’t see it (she was talking to another mom at the time).  I got really upset of course and my son was too afraid to play anymore so I had to hold him since he couldn’t stop crying and I eventually decided that we should leave since it seemed to be too dangerous for my son to play with the bully running around.

I don’t think I handled the situation in the best way possible.

- What do you do when you see another child hit your child? My son
just stood there and cried and I just tried to comfort him.  I
didn’t feel that I could scold the other child because I was afraid
his mom would get upset with me for doing so.

- What do you say to the parent?  What if the parent denies anything
ever happened?  What if the parent doesn’t do anything about it even
after confronted?

I think there are a few ways that moms can deal with playground bullies. Not every way is right and not all are wrong. The way to handle a bully certainly depends on each specific situation.

1. Leave with your child and don’t say anything to anyone. While removing your child from a harmful situation may be a good thing, it doesn’t teach the child causing harm or your child anything. It may also send the wrong message to your own child, because it doesn’t teach them how to deal with conflict in a healthy manner. It may teach them that conflict should be avoided at all costs. This world is full of conflict and we need to teach our kids how to handle it well.

2. Speak to the mother or guardian present at the time. This is what Grace did in her situation. Dawn and I both agreed that we would have probably done the same thing. Hopefully, that parent will get on to their own child for misbehaving. However, in this situation the mom did not correct her son. I think if you plead your case with the parent and they do nothing, then it is okay to go and speak to their kid yourself.

3. Speak with the child who is being a bully. If that mom gets mad at you for correcting her child, then let them say their piece to you and don’t worry about it. At least, you can leave knowing that you tried your best to correct the situation. In other cases that mom may even thank you for correcting their kid. I know one time a bigger girl was kicking my not yet 2 year old daughter while she was sitting down at the top of a slide. My protective mama instincts came out and I immediately told her in a stern voice to stop kicking my child. Her mom never said anything to me about it.

Amelia thinks that in this situation talking with the kid would have been okay.

Had I been in [Grace's] shoes I would have told the boy to stop hitting my kid.  I feel that (especially with a 2 year old) it is important to be an advocate for your child and that if another child is doing something to your child then it is perfectly fine to say something to the (wrong-doing) child.  Something like, “It is not polite to hit.” Or, “Stop hitting my son.” Then if it continues, saying something to the parents is appropriate.  If someone takes an issue with you telling their child to stop hitting yours–it is their problem.  Most parents will see what is going on and discipline their own child.  Unfortunately there are parents who are losers and deny that their child could ever do anything wrong. In that case, I still think repeating whatever you said to the kid earlier is appropriate.

4. Teach your kid to hit back. (Again, not all of these ways are exactly right or wrong.) I do know one mom that has told her son that if another boy hits him first, then it is okay if he hits back. They want him to be able to defend himself and not always be a tattletale. They feel like their son is already a little whiny and sensitive, so this is their way of teaching their son to buck up.

5. Embarrass the other mother. One mom shared her story with me about how her son did hit back when he was hit by another kid. So she went to them to intervene and started to get on her son. She said loud and clear to her son “Who taught you to act like that? Some moms let their kids act like that, but I don’t!” She looked up and saw the other mother fuming. Perhaps this tactic may work, because that parent may have on gotten on her son later for embarrassing her.

What do you do if your child is being picked on at a playground? What would have done in Grace’s situation? Does the age of the children play a role in how to deal with a bully situation?

- photo courtesy of bullyinguk

On Halloween, I was so excited to dress my kids up and see how adorable they looked in their costumes.  Our oldest gladly dawned his Mr. Incredible costume and was ready to head out the door.  Our almost two year old was not quite to happy to oblidge.  All I had to do is bring the costume near her and she screamed like I was pulling out her fingernails.  Actually getting it on her brought forth a thirty minute temper tantrum complete with the gasping for breath dramatic effect.  All of that made me angry.  Unrightly so, but I was mad.  I had longed to see my cute little girl all dressed up in her sweet “girly” outfit and she wanting nothing to do with it.  I finally gave up trying to convince her and fussed at her.  A few minutes later I realized how selfish I had been.  I was trying to force something on her that obviously made her unhappy and my response to it was completely inappropriate.  I got down on the floor, put her in my lap, cried and told her I was sorry.  She gave me a kiss, wanted to put on her shoes (to match her “normal” clothes), and we went on our way.

Many people would be shocked at the fact that I apologized to my toddler.  But why not?  Is she not a person too?  Did I not behave in a way that was wrong and hurtful?  It frustrates me to hear parents say “I am the parent,  I have the right” without taking their child’s feelings into consideration.  Not to mention, children learn by example.  We often times try to force our kids to apologize when they do something wrong to us or another child… even if they don’t mean it.  By allowing ourselves to show that we are not perfect and that we mess up too, we are allowing our children to accept that they don’t always have to be perfect, but that they should be aware of how their actions affect others. 

Another thing that was recently brought to my attention about apologizing to our kids is that it shows our children that we are all sinful and are all in need of a Savior.  My friend Ashley makes a practice of asking for her children’s forgiveness and then prays for her own forgiveness with her children.  When she told me about this, I thought it was a beautiful way to share your faith with your children. 

All that being said, it’s easy to ask forgiveness when you step on a toe, accidentally throw out a toy, or forget a birthday party, but asking forgiveness when you were acting selfish or even if you were just plain cranky is a lot more difficult, but no less needed.  Your children will learn to respect you and appreciate your honesty and they will learn how to respond to their own behaviors. 

Do you apologize to your children?  What specific way do you do it?

Photo Courtesy of deeleea