Disciplene

After watching an episode of Super Nanny (with Jo, NOT Nanny 911), I tried some direct discipline with Henry to address his climbing on the dog.

I tried stopping him with direct eye contact, a slowly spoken, yet firm voice, and a couple time-outs where I took him out of the room and told him he was not allowed to climb on Vegas. It was a lot of attention on the situation, but I think I got somewhere.

Now, if only I could remember to follow it up the next day?

Leash part 2

Using the leash has continued to be great. I'm writing about it again because I had two extra thoughts to put down:

1) Having your child hold your hand is hard on their arm/body. They are so much shorter, they have to really reach up to hold your hand.

2) Having your child ride around in a stroller is not good for their health. They need to be walking around to drain energy and experience their environment.

I succumb to the leash

Its true, I used a leash on my kid and it was great!

This past weekend we used the leash on the ferry to Pender Island...it worked extremely well. Henry was able to walk (which he loves) and not be carried (which I hate). He was also good at following the leash. It kept him walking straight and prevented him from dashing away into a crowd.

I did get a lot of weird looks, but none of them were hateful. I'm not sure why we look down on leashing kids. Is it because you are supposed to be SO good a parent that you never take your eyes off of them? or that they listen 100% when they are young? I don't care how good of a parent you are, its hard to watch your kid in a busy situation. Why are people so judgmental of parenting?!?! Why!?!? (I'm shouting to the gods that be).

Wrestle Mania

I have two ongoing issues right now:

1) his constant wrestling with Vegas, our dog.

2) still not walking with me, coming when called, or listening to "stop".

Vegas is very tolerant of Henry, but if she is very sleepy after a walk, her tolerance level goes down. I tried to stop him yesterday from throwing himself on her while she was in this sleepy state. I tried blocking him and explaining to him that Vegas was sleepy. He tried head butting me. Repeat for 10 leaps on Vegas.

Matt says he knows how to push my buttons... wow they are smart at manipulation! At 2!?!

Ultimately I was successful because I put him to bed, but he was not able to limit his behaviour.

From the little I know about the brain, the frontal lobe is responsible for telling yourself to inhibit your behaviour and of course, toddlers frontal lobes aren't all up and running (Its not fully functional until we are 24!)

Housebreaking, er, Potty Training

This one makes no sense to me in the dog world. The logic behind house breaking a puppy is that you take the pup to the right spot over and over again and prevent them from having accidents in the house with good supervision and help with a crate or pen. Yikes! This is hard with a 2-3 month old puppy that has absolutely NO time in between pees!

Fortunately with human babes, we diaper them until we as parents are good and ready to take the task on. [Actually, on a side note, that is only the way we do it culturally... in many circles, people toilet train their babies from when they are born, much like a puppy.]

Henry and I have embarked on some potty training this week. I started because I knew we would be at home for a few days (he had a cold) and I suspected he would be game.

We talked about it for a couple months before hand:

"Wow, won't it be great when you go on the potty? Then you wont have to wear a diaper anymore".

"Kids go on the potty"

"You will soon put your poo in the potty"

I also held him on the toilet a few times with his clothes on just so he could feel what it was like.

I then picked a time, stripped off his pants, and held him on the toilet and he went! He was so excited. He couldnt wait to flush the toilet.

For about 3 days, I had him in the house with no diaper on. At 2 and 2 months of age, he seems to have to go about every 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Yes I had a few accidents when I forgot to take him, or I relied on his opinion of if he had to go.

Then on day 4, he didnt want to use the toilet. I said, "ok" and put a diaper on him. 2 days later I tried again and he was an enthusiastic parter again.

I was also excited when he started to pee in his pants and then ran to the potty. Did we get any pee in the toilet? No :) but thats ok.

So day 6 now and I tried to ask him if he has to go.. he said no and then had a huge pee on the floor. Mental note, stop asking him if he has to go for at least a week. It kind of makes him surly anyways.

Next step.... peeing at other people's houses.

Classical Conditioning

Every parent needs to know what classical conditioning is.

Classical conditioning is the creation of an emotional (or bodily) response to a trigger. The trigger can be a thing, a face, a sound, a room, a motion, almost anything!

Here are some examples:

1) Food makes you salivate. Mom calls "dinner time!". You start salivating to the sound of "dinner time!"

2) You are scared of spiders. You enter an apartment you are thinking of renting and you see a spider. You now make an unconscious excuse why the apartment isn't good.

3) Your kid does something annoying. You get mad and make an angry face or talk very tensely at them. They think you can be scary.

Babies and young infants are subject to a lot of classical conditioning. They can't have solid conscious thoughts (they only think in pictures and moments, not words, which have an ability to store information).

I used classical conditioning to teach Henry to go to sleep in his crib. He's a pretty good sleeper.

I had heard from other parents and books that if your baby learns to go to sleep with you or they learn to be rocked to sleep, they won't sleep on their own. So I started with the goal of him going to sleep by himself, in his crib.

I picked a 'trigger' to sleep... it was reading books in his rocking chair, listening to music and then being placed in his crib, awake. I then began to pair it with him sleeping.

How did I know he would sleep? I used the well-known pattern of Eat, Activity, Sleep (created by the Baby Whisperer, Tracy Hogg). After he had done Eat, Activity, I always knew he was sleepy. That way I never had to guess.

You can also watch for body language such as rubbing eyes, yawning, and of course the best predictor of sleep, that long stare. If he was fussy or full-on cranky, I learned that I had missed the cues and waited too long for sleep. I would then burrito wrap him, rock and sing to him and probably would not get a successful sleep-on-your-own trial.

No worries! There are always set backs, but as long as I kept on towards the goal, I knew classical conditioning would do its work.

Off Leash Baby-Training

Henry is now 2 years old and he is very active. He enjoys running, climbing, and is curious about the physical world around him. I love this about him and we both would prefer if he could be out of the stroller as much as possible.

For him to enjoy running around, however, he has to listen to restrictions on his behaviour. I need him to have an 'emergency stop', come back to me, and look at me so I can show him stuff he might be interested in. Its also nice if he follows me so we can walk places together. Its fun to look at rocks and throw them in a drain, but only for so long...

I know it sounds like dog training (come, look, heel, stay) but commands like this are helpful for communicating instruction from either species. I'm hoping to share some "baby training" on instructions like these in upcoming posts.