Monday, April 07, 2008

My 3 year old

I'm not sure what's going on with W but he's been very interesting the last week or so. The hub and I feel like we are going to pull our hair out.

A few days ago he ripped the pages out of one of his books while in his room. We removed all books from his room. He knows this is not okay. He did it again on Saturday morning after the sitter left a book in his room. He keeps asking for us to read the book he ripped apart on saturday but we keep telling him we can't because he broke it.

Also, on Saturday morning he ripped off Super N's diaper and his own. Both had pooped and so there was poop all over the room. I woke up this morning and same thing. Gross! I don't know what's gotten into him. We are finding it very difficult to figure out how to discipline him right now when he does stuff like this b/c we're finding he's very stubborn and doesn't respond to much discipline. At this point the hub is about to duck tape the diapers on and we are trying to use natural consequences (ie. you can't read your favorite book since you destroyed it) to discipline him. We do spank but we found this weekend that b/c he's so stubborn we would be spanking him all day and he still wouldn't respond. I don't know. We're just trying to take it day by day right now and remove ourselves when we feel like our anger has gotten the best of us.

These are some of the times that remind me how difficult it is to raise a child. We don't want to squash him obviously but he needs disciplined. We want to love him but we find it's difficult to not punish him and withdraw from him when he does things that he's not supposed to do. I think we realized this weekend b/c of where he's at right now that we can't change him no matter how much we discipline him but we can communicate what's right and wrong and teach him to be respectful and obey his mommy and daddy all in the surrounding of love and acceptance. These are things he needs to learn in preparation for the real world.

Maybe more on this later as I learn more and have more thoughts...

1 comment:

Glass of Whine said...

Sounds like the three-year-old crazies. They say 2 is hard, but I have heard 3 is harder. My cousin has a lot of issues with her three year old, too. She isn't really destructive, but she doesn't listen well. She cries and cries when she plays and other kids are around (and she has an older sister). She is just almost like a time bomb. You never know what she is going to do or how she is going to react. She loved running into me with her whole body when I was pregnant, even after telling her many times she can't do that. It will get better - and, I am sure there are some great books that could help.

I heard that the Brazelton books are terrific. I am currently reading "The Happiest Toddler on the Block." I'll let you know if I read anything that may help.

Good luck! Can't wait to hear about little Joseph. xoxox