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Parenting Megathread

Labels, she qualified for help with the ADHD. Whether we call her off baseline behavior autism or not, I'm less interested in.

I want to note that when I say self-centered, I mean so self focused that nothing else exists. My sister was (remains?) like that, in that it isn't as simple thinking what she wants or needs matters more than other people, but that she is the only thing that wants. It isn't personal, she isn't being mean, she just seems oblivious, very often.

But yes, she is tweening it up, and that is providing a whole new sort of fun, of to which I am remarkably unschooled and unprepared for. Though honestly, with that stuff, I'm more willing to let that stuff go.
The goal isn’t to make things ‘easier’ but to help all of you develop better coping skills. If you have not already started to do so, I suspect you will also find yourself occasionally retreating to your own adolescent world view.
I understand her better than just about anyone on the planet, including my wife (though I'm needing to adapt to her lying for convenience behaviors now). But there is a block there that I still can't peer into. I struggle most with dealing with that block.

Obviously, the toughest thing is when to fight. And I'm learning at this point, sometimes when to fight when it matters, doesn't matter enough. This stuff is hard, especially as an only child set up. I wish I had the hindsight I'll have in several years. I wish I knew now, back when. I'm learning giving it time helps. She just needs it. Even if something needs to happen, I'm learning unless it is literal life or limb, there is no benefit for making an issue immediately of it, and rather addressing it later. I'd never have gotten away with what she does sometimes, oh boy, but she isn't me. And that environmental programming stuff isn't easy to break away from. Especially when said grandparent (my living parent) doesn't get it.

I kind of hate (jealous hate) teachers/administrators at times because they have so much experience with children, and these days a disposition for a much more positive and less impulsive reaction to misbehavior or stubbornness. Be nice to carve off some of that experience and attitude for myself.
But I think you’re well equipped for this.
Oh, I'm not, but I mean well. :D
 
Are pets out of the question? I understand totally if they are but if they are potentially possible, your daughter is at a good age to be able to benefit from helping raise a kitten or puppy. Most of the work and all of the expense will be on the adults but a dog in particular can be a source of both unconditional love and acceptance beyond mom and dad and a learning lesson as well: Puppy is hungry, needs to pee/poo, needs a nap, needs to cuddle needs to learn to walk on a leash, not chew shoes, etc. mostly: Puppy NEEDS. And it is hard to not respond to those needs which requires learning to recognize those needs.

We have lots of cat allergies in the family so we did not have cats and in fact I made my 11 year old daughter return the kitten she was given by some complete stranger for just that reason.

I understand very much of that’s just one more thing to add to your already over burdened list of things to take care of. But it really helped my kids be a bit less self centered.

The other thing to do might include: Mom’s birthday/Mother’s day is coming up. What do you think MOM might enjoy? Reading a book: Why did Jack go back up the beanstalk? Why did Bilbo go along on the quest? Why did Harry Potter feel so different? Scared? Happy/Sad, etc.
 
Plus: A lot of kids regress with a new baby in the house, as well, so you are saving yourself that headache.
I've been looking out for this, and for the most part bog brother has been really good around the twins: he wants to cuddle them, give them their bottle, comfort them when they are crying etc. and we've been trying hard to make sure that he gets plenty of quality time with his parents, although it's always one parent at a time and mostly me.

Lately, though, the twins (who I'll codename Doris and Boris) have been extra demanding of our time. We learned from a paediatrician yesterday that Doris likely has a milk allergy, and it will be a few more days until we have medicine to help with that. In the last few weeks Doris has been getting increasingly difficult to settle after feeds, and while we thought that we had solved it by switching to goat's milk formula, this week she has had a flare up. So she is hardly feeding, has stopped gaining weight, and screams at length after every feed. Boris also likely has the allergy and is waking up regularly between feeds.

So the toddler sees that his parents are constantly stopping things to deal with screaming babies, sometimes getting up from the toddler's games or having to ignore/refuse the toddler's requests for attention. So he has been throwing a lot more tantrums, crying a lot and just refusing to do things for himself even though he is capable.
 
Oh man, sorry to hear. Welcome to the hellish first year after you upgrade from one (and in your case to three). You'll get through it but things will suck for a while. I'm sure you'll work out the allergy.

I didn't see it coming, but our eldest didn't actually regress much until the younger one was older and more of a competitor, I think when he started walking. Toni and I discussed this earlier, she figures because they get mobile and start encroaching on the stuff of the oldest.

The thing I didn't realize is that they're really still babies all the way up until age four. They mature a bit between 3-4, but 3 year olds are really very large, very strong babies. So they regress eventually. Everything makes more sense if you look at it like that, rather than assuming your kid is in any way competent just because they can walk and talk well.

These days our eldest is almost four and still asks us to swaddle him like a baby, and says things like 'I'm a baby'.
 
Plus: A lot of kids regress with a new baby in the house, as well, so you are saving yourself that headache.
I've been looking out for this, and for the most part bog brother has been really good around the twins: he wants to cuddle them, give them their bottle, comfort them when they are crying etc. and we've been trying hard to make sure that he gets plenty of quality time with his parents, although it's always one parent at a time and mostly me.

Lately, though, the twins (who I'll codename Doris and Boris) have been extra demanding of our time. We learned from a paediatrician yesterday that Doris likely has a milk allergy, and it will be a few more days until we have medicine to help with that. In the last few weeks Doris has been getting increasingly difficult to settle after feeds, and while we thought that we had solved it by switching to goat's milk formula, this week she has had a flare up. So she is hardly feeding, has stopped gaining weight, and screams at length after every feed. Boris also likely has the allergy and is waking up regularly between feeds.

So the toddler sees that his parents are constantly stopping things to deal with screaming babies, sometimes getting up from the toddler's games or having to ignore/refuse the toddler's requests for attention. So he has been throwing a lot more tantrums, crying a lot and just refusing to do things for himself even though he is capable.
Well what do you expect from a part bog brother? 🤪🤪🤪

Seriously though… I was raised on curdled milk ( milk curdled with lemon juice and imwas fed what was left) as I couldn’t cope with the fat… but that was nearly 60 years ago.

I hope your babies will be ok.
 
Plus: A lot of kids regress with a new baby in the house, as well, so you are saving yourself that headache.
I've been looking out for this, and for the most part bog brother has been really good around the twins: he wants to cuddle them, give them their bottle, comfort them when they are crying etc. and we've been trying hard to make sure that he gets plenty of quality time with his parents, although it's always one parent at a time and mostly me.

Lately, though, the twins (who I'll codename Doris and Boris) have been extra demanding of our time. We learned from a paediatrician yesterday that Doris likely has a milk allergy, and it will be a few more days until we have medicine to help with that. In the last few weeks Doris has been getting increasingly difficult to settle after feeds, and while we thought that we had solved it by switching to goat's milk formula, this week she has had a flare up. So she is hardly feeding, has stopped gaining weight, and screams at length after every feed. Boris also likely has the allergy and is waking up regularly between feeds.

So the toddler sees that his parents are constantly stopping things to deal with screaming babies, sometimes getting up from the toddler's games or having to ignore/refuse the toddler's requests for attention. So he has been throwing a lot more tantrums, crying a lot and just refusing to do things for himself even though he is capable.
That is difficult. In my house, the second born had colic for 15 months so that was...not fun.

In my family, actual sibling rivalry was not during the difficult infant years but as the new baby got old enough to be very mobile and to get into older sibling's toys and stuff and to be more directly and deliberately competitive for mom and dad's attention. But honestly, I know we were very blessed, this was not a huge problem. Although No. 3 DID push No. 4 down the stairs as No.4 was crawling past the stairs....... No harm done but YIKES. That pair was just 25 months apart and had the love/hate relationship throughout childhood.
 
Potty training's now completely turned around for us. We ended up talking to our doctor who recommended putting him back in pullups for a couple weeks. So back in January we did that and reset the situation. Afterward he got a lot better, and is now doing pretty well on.. both fronts. We also recently swapped out his sound/light machine for a night light which is encouraging him to go by himself at night. A while back I'd read somewhere that 98% of kids are potty trained by age four, and that seems to be the case with him. Now five more months and we've got him in school, and daycare costs cut in half.

And the terrible twos are starting with the small one, but I'm not sure I agree with the phrase, the kid is still cute as heck.
 
And the terrible twos are starting with the small one, but I'm not sure I agree with the phrase, the kid is still cute as heck.
Yeah, when my daughter was 2, I had no idea what everyone was going on about. She was sweet! Easy!

A switch flipped on August 1. I swear she got the ENTIRE YEAR of 'Terrible Twos' in before her Third birthday on the 26th of that month. :shock::eeka::eek3:

Enjoy the joy by all means, but keep your feet planted, just in case! :biggrina:
 
And the terrible twos are starting with the small one, but I'm not sure I agree with the phrase, the kid is still cute as heck.
Yeah, when my daughter was 2, I had no idea what everyone was going on about. She was sweet! Easy!

A switch flipped on August 1. I swear she got the ENTIRE YEAR of 'Terrible Twos' in before her Third birthday on the 26th of that month. :shock::eeka::eek3:

Enjoy the joy by all means, but keep your feet planted, just in case! :biggrina:

The terrible 2.75 to 3.5 just doesn't roll off the tongue. For our eldest I swear it peaked at exactly age 3, that took some unspeakable level of patience.
 
As a parent, your job is to focus on survival, with thriving as the goal. For all of you. It will be difficult to see progress or improvement, but look for them and acknowledge them whenever you can.

Part of survival for me is things I read to help me understand them better. So that even though their normal puberty behaviors continued, I had more understanding and patience.

Part of that was reminding myself all the things they DIDN’T know. That helped me put context around the things I might get frustrated that they weren’t doing. “She doesn’t even know how to balance a checkbook - why do I think she can navigate a complex interpersonal conflict?”


However hard this is for you and your wife, it’s harder for your daughter by orders of magnitude.

And this was another thing that helped us HUGELY. I shared all my parent-reading facts with them. “You may feel this, you may feel that.” “You may feel angry and have no idea why, but you really and truly do feel the anger, and I believe you, and it’s valid. Try to let me know if you’re feeling combative for no reason and you aren’t in control and you need some space, okay? Then come to me when it’s over and we can talk.” I told her I would remember that I loved her, and that she loved me, even when she was struggling. And that I would say so.

My daughter LOVED that in her tweens when she could say to me (many times) “I’m having a moment, mom.” And she was able that way to express her anger frustration and chaos, and STILL not feel like she was hurting me.

Then there was the time she said something mean about not doing the dishes, and I said, as I learned to always do at that moment, “I love you too, honey.” She rolled her eyes and said, “mooooom. You are suppoesed to shout at me, ‘don’t you talk like that’ and I shout back, ‘I can do what I want’ and you shout, ‘do the dishes,’ and I shout, ‘I’m not going to!’ And you leave the room, stomping, and I do the dishes anyway after you’re gone.”

And I looked at her.
And she looked back. “The shouting mom? Now?”
Hoooookay, so I shouted my lines, and she shouted hers, and I stomped, and looked back over my shoulder, and she winked… and did the dishes.

It was funny and cute, but clearly she actually needed the shouting - for some hormonally incomprehensible reason. But all of our previous reading and sharing of research prepared her for it being okay to need that and allowed her to ask for that space.


I really should have continued with this instead of diverging in my post above:

There might be some advantages for a definitive assessment that might (or might not) identify your daughter as on the autism spectrum. This is more difficult and more nuanced for girls compared with boys.
Very definitely different. Girls are not given the space to be autistic as much as boys are. They display differently and it’s hard to get support for the way they display. Definitely worth the read on what differences exist. Most Autistic girls don’t get diagnosed until much much later, and after difficulties in school from the lack of diagnosis, that they usually suffer in silence.

My son is probably very close to your age, to give you a time reference. In our school system, being identified as having any kind of learning disability or disability was likely to get you tracked into only dealing with that identified disability and made it much more difficult to get both the support needed AND the academic needs met. If you can, talk to other parents who have kids that may be somewhat similar to your daughter and ask them about how well their kids' needs are being met.
With my son I had worries that if they knew he was on the spectrum, they would use limited and incorrect knowledge to address it. Like, “well he’s autistic, we’ll make everything about dinosaurs.” Wrong answer - for that kid.

I will confess that I made a grave error with my own kids by trying to get the system to work for my kids (and many of their friends) which was and remains an impossible task in my district.
My district wouldn’t give him services because “his grades are fine.” So being autistic and smart means he doesn’t need services? No, it means he has plenty of time for services!! And if you don’t meet either need, he has plenty of time to disrupt! I complained, “he’s doing fine, but he’s disrupting OTHER kids’ learning and it requires some services to help!” No, he’s at the top of his class, so no issue.

I should have done the more self centered thing and worked solely on enriching my kids education and extending lessons at home. To a large extent, this happened naturally but I was extremely frustrated with our school system's focus on neatness and everyone on the same page at the same time learning instead of adapting to the actual needs of individual kids--not just my own. I saw a number of children with mediocre grades but with high academic abilities who were being ignored because they did not have a loud bossy mom like me because their parents were busy working 2-3 jobs each to keep food on the table and the electric on.

Yeah, I went in and volunteered to give greek and latin root word classes to my son instead of spelling lessons (he was disruptive in spelling because he couldn’t engage in lists of easy words and the school felt the words he needed - 5 grades above - were too “mature”, never mind that he was reading those books so obviously he could handle them. But… yeah,). So I came in twice a week and delivered a personal etymology class - and they gave me 4 more kids to join him.


Labels such as ASD, ADHD, ODD, etc are very important as we can then arrange support. Especially with transitioning to high school
I think in most cases this is true and helpful, but a parent should watch out for whether the district has professionals or if they are lumping the ASD, ADD etc with unrelated learning disabilities and trying to give everyone the same treatment.

I understand her better than just about anyone on the planet, including my wife (though I'm needing to adapt to her lying for convenience behaviors now). But there is a block there that I still can't peer into. I struggle most with dealing with that block.

For lying, we felt it was a good conversation to have to ask what they intended to get. “I know it’s not true, and I am not angry, but I’m curious. What were you hoping to get out of that answer. Or did you think about it? How do you think other people will react if you say one thing, but they know something else? Is it worth being inaccurate like that?” And being prepared for the very real fact that they may not have any idea why they are lying and it’s so embarrassing that they deny it to the last breath. And that’s oky, just planting a seed, and creating a safe space to talk if they can later.

And related to that, and harking back to an earlier part of the discussion in this thread, I worked with my kids very very hard on what we called the “5-part apology”. My son, from autism and also sensory processing disorder, would frequently do things that upset others, particularly teachers. So I got him (and also his sister) his own leather-bound book, and we required that he write down his apologies, so that he could remember them and learn form them. Every apology MUST have all 5 elements. And after you write the draft in your book, you’ll copy it onto a notepaper for your teacher.

The elements must be addressed in order:
  1. I understand and name what happened, specifically
  2. I acknowledge how it impacted others, specifically
  3. I acknowledge how it impacts me or my reputation, specifically
  4. I name how I will repair this situation
  5. I name what I will do to make sure it does not happen again
I made him write it, and make a copy for the teacher or the person impacted. He didn’t understand the point of the effort, thought it was a waste of time, but he could follow the formula.

Then one day at school he got in trouble for throwing nuts at school. The teacher stopped him and spoke sharply. He hung his head and said (teacher told me this later), “I’m sorry. I threw nuts at the table where you were teaching. This disrupted your lesson and made everyone think I was in the way on purpose. I’ll clean up the nuts and remember when I come down the stairs that people are studying and I have to stay out of the way.” And she said she was just, “uh, yes, uh, exactly. Thank you.” And he came home and told me how wonderful the formula was and how it worked to make the situation better. And it was like the sun rising in a misty meadow. He was now a True Believer in the 5-part apology (and can quickly point out when politicians fail at it!)

Anyway, the idea of apologizing to help the situation is not intuitive or easy. And I think the same is true for tween lying. A low-key chance to understand why it’s coming out of one’s own mouth might be really helpful. I used to lie as a tween. For no real reason other than that’s the way I wanted the world to be - and it was instead very turbulent and confusing and I had no control. So I said what I wanted, not what was real.
 
As a parent, your job is to focus on survival, with thriving as the goal. For all of you. It will be difficult to see progress or improvement, but look for them and acknowledge them whenever you can.

Part of survival for me is things I read to help me understand them better. So that even though their normal puberty behaviors continued, I had more understanding and patience.

Part of that was reminding myself all the things they DIDN’T know. That helped me put context around the things I might get frustrated that they weren’t doing. “She doesn’t even know how to balance a checkbook - why do I think she can navigate a complex interpersonal conflict?”


However hard this is for you and your wife, it’s harder for your daughter by orders of magnitude.

And this was another thing that helped us HUGELY. I shared all my parent-reading facts with them. “You may feel this, you may feel that.” “You may feel angry and have no idea why, but you really and truly do feel the anger, and I believe you, and it’s valid. Try to let me know if you’re feeling combative for no reason and you aren’t in control and you need some space, okay? Then come to me when it’s over and we can talk.” I told her I would remember that I loved her, and that she loved me, even when she was struggling. And that I would say so.

My daughter LOVED that in her tweens when she could say to me (many times) “I’m having a moment, mom.” And she was able that way to express her anger frustration and chaos, and STILL not feel like she was hurting me.

Then there was the time she said something mean about not doing the dishes, and I said, as I learned to always do at that moment, “I love you too, honey.” She rolled her eyes and said, “mooooom. You are suppoesed to shout at me, ‘don’t you talk like that’ and I shout back, ‘I can do what I want’ and you shout, ‘do the dishes,’ and I shout, ‘I’m not going to!’ And you leave the room, stomping, and I do the dishes anyway after you’re gone.”

And I looked at her.
And she looked back. “The shouting mom? Now?”
Hoooookay, so I shouted my lines, and she shouted hers, and I stomped, and looked back over my shoulder, and she winked… and did the dishes.

It was funny and cute, but clearly she actually needed the shouting - for some hormonally incomprehensible reason. But all of our previous reading and sharing of research prepared her for it being okay to need that and allowed her to ask for that space.


I really should have continued with this instead of diverging in my post above:

There might be some advantages for a definitive assessment that might (or might not) identify your daughter as on the autism spectrum. This is more difficult and more nuanced for girls compared with boys.
Very definitely different. Girls are not given the space to be autistic as much as boys are. They display differently and it’s hard to get support for the way they display. Definitely worth the read on what differences exist. Most Autistic girls don’t get diagnosed until much much later, and after difficulties in school from the lack of diagnosis, that they usually suffer in silence.

My son is probably very close to your age, to give you a time reference. In our school system, being identified as having any kind of learning disability or disability was likely to get you tracked into only dealing with that identified disability and made it much more difficult to get both the support needed AND the academic needs met. If you can, talk to other parents who have kids that may be somewhat similar to your daughter and ask them about how well their kids' needs are being met.
With my son I had worries that if they knew he was on the spectrum, they would use limited and incorrect knowledge to address it. Like, “well he’s autistic, we’ll make everything about dinosaurs.” Wrong answer - for that kid.

I will confess that I made a grave error with my own kids by trying to get the system to work for my kids (and many of their friends) which was and remains an impossible task in my district.
My district wouldn’t give him services because “his grades are fine.” So being autistic and smart means he doesn’t need services? No, it means he has plenty of time for services!! And if you don’t meet either need, he has plenty of time to disrupt! I complained, “he’s doing fine, but he’s disrupting OTHER kids’ learning and it requires some services to help!” No, he’s at the top of his class, so no issue.

I should have done the more self centered thing and worked solely on enriching my kids education and extending lessons at home. To a large extent, this happened naturally but I was extremely frustrated with our school system's focus on neatness and everyone on the same page at the same time learning instead of adapting to the actual needs of individual kids--not just my own. I saw a number of children with mediocre grades but with high academic abilities who were being ignored because they did not have a loud bossy mom like me because their parents were busy working 2-3 jobs each to keep food on the table and the electric on.

Yeah, I went in and volunteered to give greek and latin root word classes to my son instead of spelling lessons (he was disruptive in spelling because he couldn’t engage in lists of easy words and the school felt the words he needed - 5 grades above - were too “mature”, never mind that he was reading those books so obviously he could handle them. But… yeah,). So I came in twice a week and delivered a personal etymology class - and they gave me 4 more kids to join him.


Labels such as ASD, ADHD, ODD, etc are very important as we can then arrange support. Especially with transitioning to high school
I think in most cases this is true and helpful, but a parent should watch out for whether the district has professionals or if they are lumping the ASD, ADD etc with unrelated learning disabilities and trying to give everyone the same treatment.

I understand her better than just about anyone on the planet, including my wife (though I'm needing to adapt to her lying for convenience behaviors now). But there is a block there that I still can't peer into. I struggle most with dealing with that block.

For lying, we felt it was a good conversation to have to ask what they intended to get. “I know it’s not true, and I am not angry, but I’m curious. What were you hoping to get out of that answer. Or did you think about it? How do you think other people will react if you say one thing, but they know something else? Is it worth being inaccurate like that?” And being prepared for the very real fact that they may not have any idea why they are lying and it’s so embarrassing that they deny it to the last breath. And that’s oky, just planting a seed, and creating a safe space to talk if they can later.

And related to that, and harking back to an earlier part of the discussion in this thread, I worked with my kids very very hard on what we called the “5-part apology”. My son, from autism and also sensory processing disorder, would frequently do things that upset others, particularly teachers. So I got him (and also his sister) his own leather-bound book, and we required that he write down his apologies, so that he could remember them and learn form them. Every apology MUST have all 5 elements. And after you write the draft in your book, you’ll copy it onto a notepaper for your teacher.

The elements must be addressed in order:
  1. I understand and name what happened, specifically
  2. I acknowledge how it impacted others, specifically
  3. I acknowledge how it impacts me or my reputation, specifically
  4. I name how I will repair this situation
  5. I name what I will do to make sure it does not happen again
I made him write it, and make a copy for the teacher or the person impacted. He didn’t understand the point of the effort, thought it was a waste of time, but he could follow the formula.

Then one day at school he got in trouble for throwing nuts at school. The teacher stopped him and spoke sharply. He hung his head and said (teacher told me this later), “I’m sorry. I threw nuts at the table where you were teaching. This disrupted your lesson and made everyone think I was in the way on purpose. I’ll clean up the nuts and remember when I come down the stairs that people are studying and I have to stay out of the way.” And she said she was just, “uh, yes, uh, exactly. Thank you.” And he came home and told me how wonderful the formula was and how it worked to make the situation better. And it was like the sun rising in a misty meadow. He was now a True Believer in the 5-part apology (and can quickly point out when politicians fail at it!)

Anyway, the idea of apologizing to help the situation is not intuitive or easy. And I think the same is true for tween lying. A low-key chance to understand why it’s coming out of one’s own mouth might be really helpful. I used to lie as a tween. For no real reason other than that’s the way I wanted the world to be - and it was instead very turbulent and confusing and I had no control. So I said what I wanted, not what was real.
I will say that there are better parenting books available now compared with when I was raising my kids.

I also think that sometimes, shouting is needed in order to release bottled up feelings and aggression that are not necessarily based on rational reactions to the actual situation the yelling is about. Kudus to you for finding ways to work with your kiddos on expressing anger and regret in ways that were safe and productive for both of them.
 
@Rhea a question on potty training. You mentioned that your son generally didn't care about making it to the potty and had many accidents. Just curious if you were able to do anything that actually helped this along?

We're doing better now, and he goes number two pretty consistently, but he doesn't use the toilet unprompted for number one at all. If we don't take him for breaks he'll have accidents all day. My experience with the whole process so far is that every time I try to intervene with some kind of approach, it doesn't really accomplish anything. Mostly he progresses on his own time. But it still feels like we're doing something wrong?
 
Not Rhea but for my son, we bought him
Superman underwear. And other superhero underwear. No little boy wants to pee on Superman’s face.

Also, target practice with Cheerios in the toilet. And of course, little boys love to imitate their dads.

I cannot emphasize this enough: don’t make a big deal out of it.
 
Trying not to, although the annoyance has likely come through a couple times. Lately I'm trying to adjust the language I use surrounding it to be more positive / encouraging, and that seems to caused some change. If the past is any indication he's going to mature a bit and eventually just start doing it.

When there is peer pressure he never has an accident. So it might just come down to the switch flipping from 'don't care' to 'care'. If he doesn't have it by JK then I think he's going to pick it up fast at that time.
 
Trying not to, although the annoyance has likely come through a couple times. Lately I'm trying to adjust the language I use surrounding it to be more positive / encouraging, and that seems to caused some change. If the past is any indication he's going to mature a bit and eventually just start doing it.

When there is peer pressure he never has an accident. So it might just come down to the switch flipping from 'don't care' to 'care'. If he doesn't have it by JK then I think he's going to pick it up fast at that time.
JK?
 
My daughter wore pull-ups into middle school because she didn't want to toilet train. It was a choice. She only stopped when she wanted to go to overnight summer camp and being toilet trained was required. The Department of Mental Health paid for therapeutic two week overnight camp each summer. 2 to 1 ratio of campers to staff.

Sorry for the interruption...
 
Trying not to, although the annoyance has likely come through a couple times. Lately I'm trying to adjust the language I use surrounding it to be more positive / encouraging, and that seems to caused some change. If the past is any indication he's going to mature a bit and eventually just start doing it.

When there is peer pressure he never has an accident. So it might just come down to the switch flipping from 'don't care' to 'care'. If he doesn't have it by JK then I think he's going to pick it up fast at that time.
Yes, peer pressure was a big factor for my oldest who is extremely social and who liked to play with the ‘big kids’ who were a really nice collection of kids from about 4-8 years old. It was also an impediment in the sense that he was often very ‘busy’ and did not want to stop ( in time) to use the toilet. But he did learn as dud his siblings. Two of the kids were extremely quick to make the switch. Two were …slower because they simply were too busy playing to want to bother with the bathroom.
 
Trying not to, although the annoyance has likely come through a couple times. Lately I'm trying to adjust the language I use surrounding it to be more positive / encouraging, and that seems to caused some change. If the past is any indication he's going to mature a bit and eventually just start doing it.

When there is peer pressure he never has an accident. So it might just come down to the switch flipping from 'don't care' to 'care'. If he doesn't have it by JK then I think he's going to pick it up fast at that time.
JK?
No, I think he's being serious...


;)
 
Trying not to, although the annoyance has likely come through a couple times. Lately I'm trying to adjust the language I use surrounding it to be more positive / encouraging, and that seems to caused some change. If the past is any indication he's going to mature a bit and eventually just start doing it.

When there is peer pressure he never has an accident. So it might just come down to the switch flipping from 'don't care' to 'care'. If he doesn't have it by JK then I think he's going to pick it up fast at that time.
JK?

In Canada the first two levels of elementary school are JK and SK, junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten. He'll be entering JK.
 
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