Hippiemommy

Category: Attachment Parenting

  • Those wonderful twos.

    My dd has recently hit the “disequilibrium” that we’ve all heard so much about. She is almost two-and-a-half, and she has been teaching me so much in the past few months.

    I was talking to a friend on the phone, and she mentioned that this should be easy because I’ve already been through this with ds. In reality, I’ve never been through this. Ds has a completely different kind of personality and never had anything anywhere close to “terrible” twos. As a matter of fact, at this age he didn’t even say “no” yet. He still just said “Sure!”

    I saw a few weeks ago that Crystal recommended Your Two-Year-Old as a good book for this age (go figure), so I picked it up from the library. The library version is really old – it was published in 1980 just days after I was born ;) So there are some outdated aspects, like a discussion on whether or not to put a car seat in the front or back |-| I’m assuming that those references have been removed in the latest version of the book. Then again, maybe they just changed the cover – I don’t know.

    Back to my point though: despite the age of the book, its been a very nice read. It has really reminded me that everything that my dd is dealing with is totally normal and has given me a few new tools ) It has also given me a wonderful peek inside of the two-year-old brain and how it is developing and working. Its really been lovely )

    As for my problem though… Yesterday and today have been plagued with instances where she requests something, then I acknowledge her request, and then she gets upset even though we’re agreeing. She’s not mad, she’s obviously having a problem communicating, but I have been trying to figure out the best way to validate her feelings and let her know that she is heard. Today’s example was (her) “I’m hungry.” (me) “We’re going to go get something to eat right now.” “No! I’m hungry!” “I know, we’re going to go get some food.” “But I’m hungry!” ??? I ended up distracting her and she was SO happy when we stopped and ate. She kept thanking me for the meal. She really was hungry and really wanted food, but she was still upset. As I was pondering a good response to that today, I read this quote

    …he doesn’t want to stay, but he doesn’t want to go ( and this, of course, is often the case when he isn’t in a bad mood) — some simple suggestion such as “But where are your shoes?” can shift his attention, with good results. Also, don’t give him more than once or two chances to make up his mind. If it becomes clear, and it often will, that he is not going to be satisfied with either of two alternatives, just pick him up and remove him from the scene, or otherwise terminate the situation. He may cry and scream, but this is preferable to continuing on and on with a fruitless, frustrating, and rather ridiculous, “Do you want to go home now?” “No.” “Do you want to stay?” “No.” If nothing pleases, so be it!

    Yesterday the same thing happened with her shoes. She had her shoes on and was crying because she wanted to wear her shoes. I thought maybe she wanted them off, but then she was crying even harder. I put them on and she just kept crying and saying “I want my shoes on!” Its tricky. I’m telling you…

    Distraction does seem to help a whole lot. I’m glad that I was able to get a little pat on the back today though. The book really helped )

  • Being near without crowding my children

    As an AP parent, I think I am constantly trying to figure out the balance between being there for my kids vs. crowding my kids and not giving them a chance to explore and grow on their own. I start to feel guilty if I am not interacting with them at all times, and yet I know that they really benefit from time to just explore and learn. This passage from “Home Education” made me smile because it includes a pretty good description of our day. I am often knitting, reading, cross-stitching, ect., while they play outside. I sit on the patio and watch them as they play, but I sometimes feel guilty as though I should be directing their play more. This passage gave me a little extra persmission to relax )

    Oh, and I initially read it as though she was saying that the mom should “check” the childrens attempts to discuss, but she’s actually talking about checking the MOTHERS attempts. Duh.

    There are few things sweeter and more precious to the child than playful prattle with her mother; but one thing is better–the communing with the larger Mother, in order to which the child and she should be left to themselves. This is, truly, a delightful thing to watch: the mother reads her book or knits her sock, checking all attempts to make talk; the child stares up into a tree, or down into a flower–doing nothing, thinking of nothing; or leads a bird’s life among the branches, or capers about in aimless ecstasy;–quite foolish, irrational doings, but, all the time a fashioning is going on: Nature is doing her part, with the vow–

    “This child I to myself will take:
    She shall be mine, and I will make
    A lady of my own.” [Wordsworth]

  • The punitive mindset

    Although I have spent plenty of time trying to explain it, I still find that many of my friends (the non-GBD kind) don’t see how coming from a punitive mindset changes everything about their discipline, even if the actions that they take are very similar to those of us who practice grace-based discipline.

    Last night I finished Crystal Lutton’s Biblical Parenting, and I felt that she concluded with a great discussion of this point. Here she is using the example of a teenager who is about to get her license.

    A healthy boundary for a parent to set with regards to their vehicle is that no one without insurance may drive their car. Tell your daughter in advance, perhaps at a famliy meeting, what will happen if she doesn’t keep up the insurance payments. I suggest that she not be allowed to drive your car without insurance. If she misses a payment, take her license and keys. When she catches up on the premiums, return them. This is not punitive. It is logic an adolescent can follow, and it prevents the natural consequence of being in an accident without insurance or a ticket for the same, and your daughter knows the consequences beforehand. This same action would be punitive if done reactively. If you’ve never discussed what will happen if she doesn’t keep up the premiums, it’s punitive to enter her room and demand her keys. Everything within the window needs to be proactive, not reactive.

    That makes perfect sense, right? The behavior of the parents can change whether their actions are punitive or not. Its not just what you do… its how you do it.

    In the above quote, Crystal also references her “window” which I thought was a great visual for showing how we are to react to our children in a way that is neither permissive nor punitive. I wish she had it online (she may, but I can’t find it), because I’d love to discuss it, but it’d be hard without the pictures.

    Now that I’m done with the book, let me say that I truly enjoyed it. I would love it if our small group could study it. My only comment/concern is that I honestly don’t know that many of the men of the group could handle it in Chapter 2 when Crystal says (in speaking of how gender roles and the role of community has changed)

    Because of this ever-increasing reliance on a husband to help in parenting the baby and young child, men’s ideas on how to parent children of this age have become more pronounced and are often seen as the “expert” advice. However, it is the woman who has been designed and called by God to parent these young people and, while the help of a husband/father is vital in our culture today, the man would be wise to follow his wife’s lead during these early years.

    I totally, absolutely, completely see where she’s coming from, but I know that the military men in our group would piss their pants when they read that. If it was later in the book, I think that we could have a great discussion, but I think that the fact that it is so close to the front means that they wouldn’t even go on. I am sure that was not her intention at all, and they’d see that if they kept reading, but I don’t think they’d ever touch the book again

    I’m hoping that our current group book Families Where Grace Is In Place will be enough of a gateway that we could later do Crystal’s book D

  • Descriptive Praise

    http://aolff.org/

    I’ve been devouring my way through Crystal Lutton’s Biblical Parenting this week. I have known Crystal for quite a while, so I feel like I’m doing this backwards, but when my friend had her book sitting on the couch, I couldn’t help but steal it, lol.

    Yesterday’s lesson for me was on descriptive praise. I have often heard that you shouldn’t use subjective words like “pretty” or “good”, instead you should use descriptive praise. I wasn’t really sure that this would work, and I honestly wasn’t sure that it is how God works. I kept thinking of

    Luke 19:17″ ‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’”

    Here it seemed to me that God was being both subjective and descriptive, but then I suppose that God knows what is well done or not, lol, so maybe its not subjective. Hmm, I’ll have to think about that.

    Plus, non-descriptive praise is everywhere. Even Joe on Blue’s Clues tells kids they’re “really smart”. It didn’t seem like a huge deal to me. I’ve never told my kids that things that they do make them “good” or “bad”. I know that’s a big no-no.

    Anyways, this quote in Crystal’s book helped to give me a nudge to change.

    If your child brings you a picture tell them what you see. “You used lots of green. I see squiggly lines and some straight ones.” If your daughter asks what you think of her dress tell her what you see. “It’s blue and it has flowers.” You will be amazed at how her face lights up. My son calls me into his playroom to show me what he’s done with his cars and I tell him what I see. “You have lined them up and all the trucks are together.” He feels a sense of accomplishment and knows that I have noticed his hard work because I can tell him what he did.

    So yesterday we made brownies. I’m using up the last of my Duncan Hines dairy-free mixes (which they’ve done away with, but that’s another blog entry). My 4-year-old son always pulls up a chair to stand next to me when I am mixing, and he always helps me to stir. He asked if he could do it all by himself, so I gave him the spatula. He stirred for a good minute, and did it to completion. Instead of my usual “Good job, you stirred the brownies.”, I said “You stirred the brownies completely. Now they’re ready to go in the pan.”. He looked like I had just told him that he had won a lifetime supply of toys, lol. He lit up, stood taller, and looked so proud. Its amazing what a difference of a few words can make!

    Thank you, Crystal! )

  • Kids and Chores

    This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently. We’ve never had any kind of formal chore charts for our kids, but they are always happy to help when it comes time to pick up the house. They help enthusiastically and with a generous heart. I have thought about making charts, but I wonder if that will take some of the enjoyment and the gift of it away.

    I found some lists online for what should be expected for each age, and my kids do pretty much everything on there. There are some things that don’t apply (like feeding pets – we don’t have any), but they are great about doing the items on there that apply to our family.

    So I guess I’m just wondering what you do with your families. If you have a chart system, when did you start?

  • You don’t cry-it-out?! Do your kids ever sleep?!

    Everyone has an opinion, right? It seemed like everyone thought that they knew more than me when it came to raising my child. Obviously I needed them to enlighten me on the ways of forcing sleep. Cry-it-out here… cereal-in-a-bottle there… you get the point. At 21, no one thought that I could have any insight whatsoever into raising my son.

    During my pregnancy I had discovered Dr. Sears. I knew right away that this was the kind of parent that I wanted to be. I was raised in a wonderful, Christian, breastfeeding, no-spanking, farmers-market-eating kind of family, so I fully expected to be that kind of mom. I saw no appeal in the other styles of parenting. My parents had grown up in very strict, punitive homes, and I thank God (truly, I really do), that they worked so hard against what they had been taught by example and they created an entirely new family tradition of child-raising. I could never thank my parents enough for that.

    Still, for some reason, it seemed like everyone outside of my family thought that my kids would need to cry in order to sleep. They believed that my kids were manipulating me when they cried. They didn’t believe that breastfeeding should be on demand.

    Well, I am here as living proof that breastfeeding on demand will not create terrible monsters who never sleep. Much to the contrary, I have the best sleepers that I know. My son started sleeping through from 7pm-7am at 4 weeks. I know this is very early. I know this is not the norm. I would never force this upon him, but it was how he naturally slept. My daughter slept about the same, although she would start later and wake later (more like 9pm-9am) by the time she was 6 weeks.

    When my children were infants, we set up a bassinet next to our bed. It was just a Pack-N-Play with a bassinet feature – nothing fancy. We had a night time routine from the beginning, and it was different depending on our children’s needs. For my son, who from birth would fall asleep when music played, we had a special Lullaby and Hymn CD. For my daughter, who was always a snuggler, she would fall asleep each night while nursing in the sling. We did what fit the child.

    After they were down for the night, if they cried, we picked them up and fed/changed/rocked/soothed them. My son did not like being in bed with us. He would cry if I even tried to nurse him laying down on the bed, because it would cause him to roll into me. For him, I sat in the rocking chair for these feedings. For my daughter, as I said, she loved to snuggle, so we would let her nurse in bed with us and then I would move her to the bassinet once she was asleep. Neither of my children had a problem with transitioning to their own room or their own beds when the time came that it was right for our family. There were no Dr. Phil horror stories here =P

    My point of sharing is just to point out that for every story you hear of people who Ferberize or Ezzo (the link includes the AAP’s statement on why Ezzo-ing is dangerous), there are stories like mine, of kids who sleep great and were able to attach, bond, and feed on demand, just like God intended for our bodies.

    Please, mommas, let me encourage you that our bodies are made to feed on demand. When babies go through natural growth spurts, they will cluster feed to increase your supply. Even adults get thirsty before 3 hours is up. Please don’t refuse a drink to your child in an attempt to force a schedule upon them. I know that those first weeks and months can be very exhausting, but it is just a short phase of your life.

    My kids found natural schedules. They slowly spaced apart their meals as their tummies grew, and the relationship that we formed through breastfeeding is something that I am incredibly grateful for. Infancy is such a special, vulnerable time in a child’s life, and I am so thankful that we were able to foster such a close, trusting relationship with our kids. It was truly a blessing.

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