I've created a monster - Page 3

[Maiasaura]

Originally Posted by The4OfUs

I am SO thankful to have had a more easygoing kid first, so that I saw that so much has to do with temperament, and so much is just a phase...

I met a mom back when my ds was 3 (he's 9 now) who had two kids, both boys. The older one at the time was about...hmm, 5? And he was some kind of handful, let me tell you. Mine is a handful, and this kid made mine look like Buddha.
The younger one was mellow as could be. The mom told me she was convinced God gave her the second one, with his temperament, to show her that she was not Bad Mommy after all, and that some kids are just...the way they are. It actually gave her a bit of sanity.

Hang in there

Three. I hated three. I tell people now "Four is the reward for not killing my child at three" Four was so mellow, so cooperating, SUCH a difference fro three!

[USAmma]

Mine are older now, but I remember how tiring this stage was! Especially if you have a spirited little one who is trying out her wings. I had two mantras: "This too shall pass" and "Don't take it personally."

They need to know you love them anyway, no matter how disagreeable they get. It's often related to frustration that they want do something that they are physically unable to do. If they don't get enough sleep or are hungry, that just compounds things. Also, mine used to get cranky about 2 days before they started to show symptoms of getting a cold.

[ssh]

Originally Posted by Iucounu

Continuing to instantly give in to this particular child's demands, dropping everything to accommodate her every whim, will make the problem worse. No child needs to be instantly tended to every time she screeches, for any reason. The OP started this thread in the knowledge that she had contributed to the situation (she quite obviously has). Neither of my two children has had such issues.

Will this child turn out to be a sociopath, or have other serious issues because she was allowed to continue to wrap her mother around her little finger? Most likely not; but there's no benefit in it whatsoever. The child is being encouraged in an overly anxious behavior pattern, which is having consequences for the parent as well.

One could of course justify any overly demanding behavior as a kid just "needing more love". I understand that a lot of you are coming at this from a perspective of some popular reading on attachment theory etc., but in this case the child is simply being overly demanding.

I'm sorry, but this is a gentle discipline forum where most of the parents use attachment parenting or natural parenting. Many of us have based this choice on scientific research and some on pure instinct. Basically AP parents and natural parenting parents believe meeting a child's instinctive needs helps them feel more secure and develop into emotionally secure independent people.

Separation anxiety developed as part of the human survival instinct because in primitive conditions a toddler alone would be food for predators and be killed in accidents form generally hostile environments. Even though our environments are usually safer now we're still biologically wired to need constant contact with our parents while we're small, defenseless and impulsive. Until modern times and still in much of the world a child this age would be on her mothers back most of the time. The OPs child is completely normal. Taking care of her DDs needs will make her feel safe and be less needy with time. Wearing her DD on her back while doing chores would help her DD feel safe, involved and give mom the chance to get things done. Since a child this age is incapable of the manipulation because their frontal lobes aren't developed yet the child can't "be trying to wrap her mother around her little finger". The child is just being a normal small young primate by needing to be in physical contact with her mom.

Here's a good link for you about the neurological value of a nurturing parenting style http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/li...n_palmer2.html . Most of the articles on the natural child site are pretty good. For more indepth info on how a nurturing parenting style effects children on a neurological level the Science of Parenting by Margot Sunderland is very good and has alot of the hard research referenced in the back of the book.

[ssh]

For the OP, I found putting my DD is a backpack worked really well during those clingy phases. One very fun distracting activity was letting my DD fingerpaint in her high chair. When I really needed her occupied and couldn't wear her it usually worked really well. If you don't want to use actual finger paint you just need something smearable. Cleaning is easy just wash off the high chair tray and give your messy child a quick bath. Letting her finger paint also seemed to decrease being really messy with food. It seemed to satisfy her need to be messy.

We still let DD stand in a chair and help. Now that she's over 4.5, she's really pretty helpful in the kitchen instead of just feeling involved. She helps get stuff out, puts stuff up, unloads bags and helps with alot of the precooking part of food preprep ...... no chopping yet though. Hey having a kid that likes being with you while you do things can develop into a having a very helpful little person.

[USAmma]

BTW I wanted to share-- my first dd was very very intense, had huge horrible tantrums, and I had a hard time taking her out to public or to people's houses. She is now 9.5 years old, a sensitive, kind girl who gets good grades, has healthy friendships, never gets in trouble at school, and still has her spirited personality-- it has just been directed at good things instead of being directionless the way it was when she was a toddler/preschooler. :-) So hang in there.

[mamaofthree]

Originally Posted by ssh

I'm sorry, but this is a gentle discipline forum where most of the parents use attachment parenting or natural parenting. Many of us have based this choice on scientific research and some on pure instinct. Basically AP parents and natural parenting parents believe meeting a child's instinctive needs helps them feel more secure and develop into emotionally secure independent people.

Separation anxiety developed as part of the human survival instinct because in primitive conditions a toddler alone would be food for predators and be killed in accidents form generally hostile environments. Even though our environments are usually safer now we're still biologically wired to need constant contact with our parents while we're small, defenseless and impulsive. Until modern times and still in much of the world a child this age would be on her mothers back most of the time. The OPs child is completely normal. Taking care of her DDs needs will make her feel safe and be less needy with time. Wearing her DD on her back while doing chores would help her DD feel safe, involved and give mom the chance to get things done. Since a child this age is incapable of the manipulation because their frontal lobes aren't developed yet the child can't "be trying to wrap her mother around her little finger". The child is just being a normal small young primate by needing to be in physical contact with her mom.

Here's a good link for you about the neurological value of a nurturing parenting style http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/li...n_palmer2.html . Most of the articles on the natural child site are pretty good. For more indepth info on how a nurturing parenting style effects children on a neurological level the Science of Parenting by Margot Sunderland is very good and has alot of the hard research referenced in the back of the book.

this is very well said! thank you!
i would add the book "Connection Parenting" by Pam Leo is a great book (i am re-reading)

h

[jillmamma]

With my older two, and now with my 7 month old, letting them play nearby has helped with the separation anxiety. If I have to do dishes/cooking, either putting her on my back or in the highchair and moving it right by where I am working can help. Of course sometimes I just decide to wait and do it later when she is in bed, but sometimes you have to do it now so you can eat. Another thing that worked well for me in the kitchen was to keep one cupboard unlocked that had stuff in it okay for a kid to play with...stainless steel bowls, plastic/wooden spoons, "kid" plates/bowls, etc. They had fun hiding in the cupboard, or bringing out dishes to bang on. Good luck, I know it is not always very easy to "get things done" with a baby/toddler around!

[Storm Bride]

Four kids, all parented with AP, and GD (to various degrees). They've all been different. DD1 didn't want to be held at all until she was about two or three. I couldn't put ds2 down. My youngest isn't quite 16 months yet, but she's got a little bit of both.

Iucounu: Mothers everywhere cook dinner with their 16 month olds around? Sure, but they do it in a myriad of different ways. My dh works a fairly early schedule and is usually home by 5:00 or 5:30...so I wait for him and cook dinner when he gets home, and he wrangles kids. My sister's youngest are 7 year old twins...but she used to just get frustrated and yell a lot (she's not AP/GD at all). My aunt used to corral her kids in the living room, with a fence. In the past, I've prepared/cooked many meals with a child on my back or hip. The fact that moms manage to make dinner doesn't mean that a mom who is having trouble is doing something wrong! Lots of moms have trouble...and still cook dinner.

[lach]

I haven't read all the comments, but I wanted to say that though each stage has its unique PITA parts, the 15-18 month stage was the absolute WORST for me. DD was just totally impossible and I was completely at my wit's end. The separation anxiety really peaked, and she's start shrieking hysterically if I so much as headed in the general direction of a door. She suddenly couldn't do ANYTHING by herself. She had previously played happily on the floor for ages while I did my thing, but now it was a constant hanging onto my leg. And the tantrums, oh the tantrums. Over every.little.thing.

At about 18 months, it was like a switch went off. She hit some huge developmental leap and suddenly she was a totally different child (much more like her 12-15 month self except sooo much more capable and independent).

At 16 months, I don't really see how it could possibly be a discipline issue. You can't really effectively discipline a child that age anyway, unless you do some truly awful blanket-training type of stuff that only crazy fringe types do anyway. All you can really do is redirect and redirect and redirect and redirect and eventually, at some point, maybe, hopefully, they'll either get the point, or they'll reach an age of reason and you can use your gentle discipline techniques and have them actually work.

[mrs.rich]

Thank you for posting this! I'm in the same boat with twin 19 month old boys who, at 4pm every day, turn into lunatics who want to hang on me and whine. There is no cooking dinner anymore unless I have the forethought to put together something in the crockpot before the witching hour. We do a lot of breakfast-for-dinner now. I'm hoping this passes soon, but part of me really likes just going ahead and sitting down with them and playing for an hour or more instead of doing chores or cooking. I think there may be sometime in the future when they don't want me to play with them, so I want to enjoy it now!

[bodhitree]

Originally Posted by mrs.rich

Thank you for posting this! I'm in the same boat with twin 19 month old boys who, at 4pm every day, turn into lunatics who want to hang on me and whine. There is no cooking dinner anymore unless I have the forethought to put together something in the crockpot before the witching hour. We do a lot of breakfast-for-dinner now. I'm hoping this passes soon, but part of me really likes just going ahead and sitting down with them and playing for an hour or more instead of doing chores or cooking. I think there may be sometime in the future when they don't want me to play with them, so I want to enjoy it now!

OP here. To update, our Learning Tower arrived last week, and my DD LOVES it. My new strategy for cooking dinner is to plan to do it in small chunks of time, starting right after the end of naptime, and to let DD watch/"help" while she stands next to me in her Learning Tower. It works great! And since I'm doing it in small chunks, we can take lots of breaks to go play or sit on the couch and nurse. We are both enjoying our afternoons a lot more. And I really like that she is getting involved in preparing meals so young--we place a high priority on having made-from-scratch "real" food whenever possible, so I'm glad she's already started learning about how that works.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the behavior that was annoying me so much a few weeks ago was not misbehavior. It was a result of her strong drives, both to learn everything she can about her world, and to maintain a strong connection with me. I certainly wouldn't want her to stop acting on those drives! I just need to help her channel them into ways of interacting that make us both happy.

So mrs.rich (and anyone else with the same "problem"), a Learning Tower might be worth the investment for you, too! It can hold two little ones at a time.