Rainy Season

Doesn't it always seem to be the case that just when you think you are making progress, you end up losing your footing and slipping back down the hill a bit?  Okay, maybe not always, but sometimes, and when it does happen it's frustrating and exhausting.

We seem to be in that spot with our middle child.  And we are definitely all frustrated and exhausted.  

Just when I thought we were making headway on her social skills, we had a bit of a set back.  She's been so much better at school.  Drop offs are seamless. She's always playing with the other kids when I pick her up.  She's talking with them all and interacting like any 4 year old should.  It really makes me proud.

Now the bad news.  This weekend we went to one of her best friends birthday parties and she would not participate one bit.  Not only did she not want to do anything at the jumpy house place, she was crying on and off the whole time and saying "I want to go home," in her soft, sweet voice.  This has never happened before.   She's been shy, sure.  She's been hesitant to play, definitely.  But I can always get her going and engage her to participate in something along with me by her side.  This time, no go.  I tried all my tricks too.  I was perky and happy and funny.  I tried pretending like I was glued to the thing and I needed her help to get me up.  I tried tickling her and tempting her with basketball, in a jumpy that had absolutely no one in it but us.  All the things that usually work.  But I got nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  Except for tears, tears and more tears.  It was like she made up her mind from the second we entered the place (and not one minute before mind  you - she was perfectly happy the whole day and all the way there) and she wasn't going to budge.

So after a half hour or so, we left.  It just wasn't worth it anymore.  I never usually give up (or give in) like that.  That was a first for me.  

Wait.  I take that back.  That was a second for me.

The first was a few weeks ago when she refused to go into her gymnastics class.  I can't believe I almost forgot about it.  We were all the way there and inside with her shoes off and all.  And all the while she was saying, in a nice voice, that she didn't want to go.  And I was talking with her and trying to work through it.  But when the door to the gym opened up, she didn't budge.  

Then her brother and sister also ended up in tears at that same moment, due to other occurrences not worth detailing.  But suffice it to say, I'd had enough.  So we left.  Now that was a first.  I really don't give in like that.  Mostly because I can usually get my way.  Oh, I mean, I can usually get her to come around.  Because this is all about her, right?

On the plus side, she has been better with babysitters lately.  But we can still have an episode without warning where she'll just cry and cry and scream a bit when she has to say good-bye to me.  Actually, speaking of that, she did in fact do just that a couple weeks ago.  And the worst part about it was that I was leaving her with my husband.  And her tantrum only made him sad and angry.  Which made her more sad and angry.  And it wasn't pretty until after about 30 minutes when she finally calmed down through something fun and distracting that my husband maneuvered.

By then he was frustrated and exhausted.  Of course.

Now this morning she was digging her feet in again.  A lot of mornings lately she'll just decide she doesn't want to get dressed or go along with the flow.  And it aggravates my husband and I to no end.  We struggle and struggle to turn her around and it just isn't working anymore.

We are frustrated and exhausted.  Wait, did I mention that already?

Do you know how hard it is to stay positive and perky when you are pissed off?  But if you go down the toe-to-toe path with her, you'll regret it.  Because this girl can dig her feet in.  And then the calm refusals turn into outright loud and obnoxious refusals, and you are no better off.  I thought I knew how to be stubborn.  But this little one takes the cake.  So your best ammunition to turn things around is to stay positive and win her over to your side.  Which usually works.

It's just zapping all our energy in the meantime.

And lately I've tried reinstating the sticker charts for rewarding positive behavior.  But I think I just don't have the time and energy to make it really rewarding for her.  Or else this girl needs more than the usual dog and pony trick to keep her happy.  Because it doesn't seem to be having much of an impact on her.

So where do we go from here?  She's so sweet and cuddly and lovable.  She's a little ray of sunshine.  

Until those rain clouds come.  And then watch out, because you could get a flash flood.

That's where I feel like we are at with her.  My husband and I are trying to hold the sandbag damn together while the flood waters keep rising and receding.  When will the rainy season stop?  As she gets older?  As she learns that we won't give in to her little daily battles?  How long will this all take?

More importantly, how long can my husband and I hold back the floods?

Frankly, I think she's the one that knows all about sandbagging.

Progress Report

I’m happy to report that my younger daughter is branching out.

As you may remember, her good-byes were wearing me out, and her wariness around anyone that doesn’t live in our home was weighing me down.

So I made a plan and I tried to keep it simple.

First and foremost, pay attention to her. Sounds easy enough, but in this house, and at this age, she became easy to over look.

All the new accomplishments of our older daughter were taking up a lot of space (“She’s reading chapter books! She’s starting 1st grade!”). Not to mention those of our son (“Honey, did you hear him say “car” when he picked up my keys!??! He’s such a genius!”).

She was truly lost in the middle. She has a vast vocabulary already, and she has been at the same preschool for the past almost two years. Not too much new going on there.

So I started really watching her. I showered her with love and attention. I spent a little one-on-one time with her working on things like learning the letters of the alphabet, completing puzzles, playing computer games or building neighborhoods out of blocks.

And I congratulated her every new, and old, accomplishment. I supported and encouraged her in the face of each challenge. In short, I concentrated less on the end result and more on the process.

Again, sounds easy, I know. But with so many other things going on in the house, it was even easier for this kind of attention to fall by the wayside for a while.

We also set up some play dates for her, no big sisters allowed. I put up a sticker/reward chart for her “good good-byes” as we liked to call them. And not to be overlooked, a special shout out goes to my husband, who started taking her to school more, which helped set her up for success with a better ‘mommy good-bye’ at home.

And then it happened. She started to blossom.

At first I thought maybe I was just imagining it. But then I realized she really was growing. Her spirit was getting bigger and stronger, and her sense of pride in herself was becoming almost visible, shining right through those beautiful eyes of hers.

I even caught her one time the other day trying to do something while muttering “you can do it, you can do it” over and over again.

Then yesterday, upon picking her up from school, her teacher told me that she played with all the other girls in her class all day. She said she was running around with them laughing and having a grand old time. And then her teacher said “and she’ll even say good-bye to me, right?” and on cue, my daughter did just that, instead of burying her head into me and playing shy upon leaving like usual.

Today I saw her teacher from last year who had a similar report. “She’s really out there playing with everyone!” she said. “I knew she had it in her. Don’t you worry about that one, she’s a loud one when she wants to be,” she informed me.

Indeed she is.

Look out world, here she comes.

A Groundhog's Goodbye

Here’s a little more clarification about what my younger daughter and I are working on these days, per my last post a few days ago.

First things first, she is a kind, loving and thoughtful little girl. She is just starting to discover the joy in making people laugh and is really beginning to shine when the spotlight is on her.

I see a budding flower in her that is already amazing in its own right, so fresh and full of life. So raw with emotion and sincerity. And it will have a remarkable beauty when it blooms.

It’s just that her bud isn’t starting to blossom yet. And from my experience, it should be a bit more open than it is right now.

The challenge lies in her social skills. She is hesitant, even reluctant, to join in social situations on her own. Even if I am there, sometimes it takes her a while (and I mean over an hour) to really separate and go join the fun. A lot of times her big sister helps, but sometimes I think that can even make things worse because she’s still not trying things out on her own. Plus she will chase her sister down if she tries to go off with her own friends, which puts a bit of a damper on my other daughters’ experience.

But once she is in the moment, she does have a lot of fun and sometimes she even shows the rest of the world what I get to see every day.

Her preschool teacher last year told me it took a few months of school before she would even talk in class. And she doesn’t really have any one that she considers a close friend in her class because I think she’d just as soon play on her own. Plus she sticks to the one little girl that she has known her whole life who isn't in her class. She calls her one of her "best friends", and is still reluctant and unwilling to go play with her when we arrive at the school.

The real downside to this is that sometimes it’s too late and she doesn’t get everything she wanted because the world couldn’t stand still waiting for her to jump in.

As her mother, this is my arch enemy. I want her to have everything she wants and more. And I know she wants these things. She just can’t seem to muster up the strength to venture out on her own, and that weighs her down.

I want to lighten her load so she can run free and soar high. I want to ensure she doesn’t suffer from missed opportunities because she is so painfully shy.

Granted missed summer camps, gymnastics classes, and the like aren’t going to turn her into a social leper. I know she’ll be fine if I leave her alone and don’t worry so much. She will get through this stage in time.

But there are two problems here. One: I don’t want her to be just fine. I want her to be stupendous. And two: how much time are we talking about? Because this time that she spends is not just hers, it’s mine too.

Do you remember that movie Groundhog’s Day? Where the guy kept living the same day over and over? Well I have that going on with her goodbyes. Which are closely tied in to her hellos. Which all circle around to her shy social habits.

Here’s how her goodbye goes. She says she’s ready, then when the moment comes she balks. Burying her face in my legs is usually next, followed by “I don’t want to go to” fill-in-the-blank. Then we have a five minute discussion about what bribe I’m currently offering, and maybe one out of five times that works in motivating her to walk in to her activity, albeit without a look back or a good-bye.
It’s like I’m sending her off to the slaughter instead of someplace where fun and creative people are waiting to teach her all kinds of new and exciting things.

If you add up all the school mornings, gymnastics classes, summer camp days, swimming lessons, babysitter afternoons, etc, for the past year and a half, it’s over 400 times we’ve gone through this song and dance.

It’s killing me softly. I can’t take it anymore.

And anyone who knows me knows that I am a do-er. I need to feel like I am completely controlling doing something to help the situation.

So here is where the last post begins. With a trek into the social world of my three/almost four year old.

Over the next year and more, we will go places, we will see people, we will make friends, we will have play-dates, and we will enjoy every opportunity.

And slowly but surely, if I do my job right, that “we” will turn into “she”.

My end goal is that she sees her own opportunities ahead of her and she runs full-force, or at least at a fast-paced walk, until she can grab it on her own and head out toward the wild blue yonder.

But she still looks back to make sure I’m still there.

And I always will be.

Marshmallows Anyone?

This morning my youngest daughter did her usual Tuesday routine. It's a pretty simple routine actually. It involves saying "I don't want to go to school" in response to everything we ask her to do. The plus side is she is REALLY good at expressing this feeling.

After a dozen or so reiterations of this sentiment, I feel like shutting her in her room until she's ready for prom. But alas, that would not get us to the preschool, which, as all studies indicate, would lead to her life as a high school drop out without any notion of what a prom may be.

So we struggle through. One way I have learned to get the desired behavior is by offering a reward. When I was working as a therapist and social worker with foster children, I had a foster parent tell me that developing a 'reward chart' and offering stickers and treats as positive reinforcement was bribery. And she used a capital B. In fact, she was a capital B, but that's another story.

My response was this: if you were to take orders all day from an authority figure, like, say, a boss, you would want to be recognized for your hard work too, right? You'd not only want your pay check, but you'd want a gold star (pay raise, recognition award, title change, fill-in-the-blank) for doing a good job. So don't undermine your kids' hard work at learning and adapting to this crazy world by saying they don't deserve a little treat for doing the right thing every now and then.

Herein lie the marshmallows. When I'm trying to get out the door in the morning, and then I'm trying to peel my child off my leg at the preschool, I use the magic of marshmallows to encourage good behavior. And it works. If she goes in without a fuss she gets some mini marshmallows when I pick her up after school. And you better believe it's the first request she makes. Quickly followed by a statement like "I had sooo much fun at school today".

Could this be considered bribery? Perhaps. Does it work? Definitely. Will I be arriving at the high school after her first day on campus with a little green cup filled with mini marshmallows? Let's hope not.