3-day parenting

I’m starting to notice a strange pattern with our parenting. Every time we change something for our kids, it takes them 3 days (or less) to accept the change. All sorts of things have fit this pattern. Starting solids, dropping night feeds, changing routines. The most notable example was when we moved Emily to her bed, which took a day. She’s only gotten out of it twice since she’s been in it (Chrismas time).

Since I went on holidays, Emily no longer gets a dummy and is using a potty. By the third day, Emily didn’t even ask for the dummy (though she did cry at bedtime for a week). The potty thing is technically longer but we started it and Emily got a cold so we postponed it until after she got better (because she was miserable, was having trouble understanding what we wanted her to do and dehydrated, making it really hard to get her to actually use the potty). Today was the third day since starting potty use again and she didn’t do a single wee or poo in her nappy. She even told us that she needed to go to the toilet (I was thinking we’d have to keep asking her or she’d forget and go in her nappy).

So how did we get this 3-day things happening? I think it’s the expectation we have for our kids. We mean what we say. We don’t give in. Bad behaviour is not tolerated. Basically, we expect our kids to do certain things and they know this and will try to meet our expectations. This sharply contrasts with what I think is a more common attitude which seems to involve letting the kid do what they want while trying to convince them it would be a good idea to do what you want.

Of course, it also helps that we waited until they were ready for the things we were asking of them. For example, most people spend months doing potty training but if the kid can’t tell when they have to go, there’s little point. We’ve been encouraging Emily to tell us when she does a wee or poo and we were pretty sure she could tell that she had to go so we just told her that wee and poo don’t go in the nappy anymore and that she should tell us so we can put her on the potty. The first two days (three if you count the day before she was sick) were adjustment days where she didn’t want to go to the potty. She’d say “no” when we asked and then immediately go in her nappy. We would re-inforce the new rules when she did this and try to sit her on the potty at opportune times (eg. just after she wakes up she usually needs to wee). By today, she understood the new rules and wants to do the right thing. She’s even a bit over-enthusiastic. She’ll get us to put her on the potty so she can fart!

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Yet another 3-day thing, Isaac has started on solids. He doesn’t just push the food out of his mouth now and even opened it for me today. We fed Emily solids in the morning, moving from the rice cereal to kid porridge and finally weet-bix. At some point we started feeding her dinner too. However, we’re doing Isaac at night to try and help him sleep better. He’s always eaten less than Emily and this makes him get hungry more easily. When he wakes up in the early mornings (which is common, due to cold or noise from outside) he’ll get hungry and require settling and a dummy (breakfast is at 7, not before). Emily would wake up in the early mornings too but would go back to sleep just fine. On dark and quiet mornings, Isaac doesn’t get up until breakfast time and when he does wake, it’s not at a regular time (which would indicate a feeding problem). This morning, Isaac sleep in until nearly 8 after being re-settled so the food might be working.

I think another part of the problem is that by 4 months, Emily could put the dummy in her mouth. Isaac still can’t do this so he’ll whinge until someone else does it. We encouraged use of the dummy instead of his fist because dummies are easier to get rid of. Of course in the last few weeks, Isaac has been getting ready to crawl so we need to tie him up or he’ll end up squashed into the cot bars. He’ll have to learn to stay still at night before we can stop tying him up and let his hands be free to put a dummy in. We’ve got a road near us getting re-surfaced and all the traffic goes down our street. Put together it’s not so surprising that he’s not handling the early morning properly yet. I think the road works are due to end in a month which should be good for him since he should be able to lie still and put in his dummy. The later sunrise for winter will keep the birds quiet till later so all should be good. I’m crossing my fingers.