Allowances and Requirements

I went to the little meeting with the mentor lady at Abby's school today and had a huge realization. I wanted to clarify with her this whole concept that on the one hand with kids up til 5 or so, ignored behavior is abandoned behavior... so when Abby is in some way acting up, it's best not to have a big reaction. Don't use a lot of words and don't react any stronger than anything else.

But on the other hand she has also always said the one behavior she won't tolerate is defiant behavior. Well... sheesh, isn't most of the behavior I'm seeing defiant in some way? The visiting school psychologist even used the example of a three year old saying 'NO!' and the mom in that case shouldn't try to reason or argue with the child but completely ignore that because it's inappropriate and makes no difference - the mom is in charge end of story. But isn't that defiant? So I had her clarify that a little and what we ended up talking about is how - ESPECIALLY with especially good kids, but really with all kids, they are so totally wound up after being in a structured environment - even one with two recesses and etc etc because they want so dearly to be accepted by the teachers and the other kids and it's all so totally stressful on them that that is often why they get home and just need to tear something apart.

So she actually suggested giving them things to tear apart if you can't take a lap around a field or whatever. A wet rag or old shirt or something. A bath was also an option on the opposite end, all suggestions aimed at helping these guys relax.

Well *BING**Bing*BING* Tuesday Abby was insanely unmanageable and I could not figure out why. She had been at school WITH Daddy until noon and then Lunch Bunch (smaller group of kids) until two and I was just sure she had had plenty of interaction, plenty of running around, plenty of everything... so I had scaled that day to be much more about sitting around the house. But now I'm realizing that was a LONG wonderful day of school, but it was still not her territory, still a structured environment and that was why she really needed to just RUN herself silly afterwards. *sigh*

Oh and the flip side from Miss Pat is that when you make these allowances on a regular basis, and really work with your child on that, then it is perfectly reasonable to require unfairly good behavior at a restaurant or event. I am going to make a little 'going to dinner bag' that I only let Abby play with at restaurants. I've obviously tried that before but I've never taken it back after the restaurant, so it gets stale and I was thinking, well I can't just buy her behavior. BUT this is much more reasonable - makes it special and Miss Pat did suggest having something new in there every time but it certainly doesn't have to be big. Abby would respond really well to that I think.


SO now all I have to do is REMEMBER this. The image going through my head right now is when my munchkin is at that point of total internal combustion but she does have a pretty good control meter she kind of puts her hand to her forehead and takes a clump of hair like, "I'm losing it here people!" and my first reaction is NOT to clap my hands and say let's go run somewhere. And I want that to be my first reaction. So... right... brain... keep this!