Poo-poo
Sometimes we're slow to react as parents and when trying to nail down the behaviors that we want to encourage in our children we don't catch the ones we should have discouraged. Phoebe is a very emotional child. She feels deeply about the things around her. Her relationship with her family is important to her but her own feelings are easily hurt and buried. She's expressive enough that it's readily apparent to her family when this occurs and we're able to love her back to us when she becomes saddened. When sibling rivalry rears its head she's quite likely to express herself verbally. When directed at her sister she has a tendency to resort to name calling. A few months ago, she took to calling her sister a poo-poo. We didn't discourage this enough and so it became habit. It was her standard epithet, hurled at the her sister at even the slightest infraction of fairness to her 3 year old eyes. Sophia has become better at not reacting to her sister's occasional taunting but it still affects their ability to play peacefully with one another.
Traditional methods of discouragement weren't working. Phoebe is quite the headstrong little girl and was able to withstand the time-outs, lectures, discussions, and coercion of her parents. We decided to try something classic. A dab of hot sauce on a spoon. In this case we used Tapatio sauce. It's very mild but can be felt enough to cause concern without causing any pain to a 3 year old. When she slips up she takes her medicine with courage. Very few doses were necessary to get our point across. Is it wrong to do this? Maybe if it were overused, but a habit that's harmful to her relationship with her sister was enough to merit the big guns.
I also want to note how wonderful it is to have children who play so well together. The greatest cause of distress in their relationship is not because of pure rivalry but because they play so hard that someone inevitably gets a bump or thump and has to sit out from the excitement until bumps and feelings have healed. They truly apologize to one another and act like best friends most of the time.
Traditional methods of discouragement weren't working. Phoebe is quite the headstrong little girl and was able to withstand the time-outs, lectures, discussions, and coercion of her parents. We decided to try something classic. A dab of hot sauce on a spoon. In this case we used Tapatio sauce. It's very mild but can be felt enough to cause concern without causing any pain to a 3 year old. When she slips up she takes her medicine with courage. Very few doses were necessary to get our point across. Is it wrong to do this? Maybe if it were overused, but a habit that's harmful to her relationship with her sister was enough to merit the big guns.
I also want to note how wonderful it is to have children who play so well together. The greatest cause of distress in their relationship is not because of pure rivalry but because they play so hard that someone inevitably gets a bump or thump and has to sit out from the excitement until bumps and feelings have healed. They truly apologize to one another and act like best friends most of the time.
You can always tell when BJ posts the blog, all the big words are used :p I like more simple words like POO POO! :p
ReplyDeletenice- it sounds like a pretty simple way to fix a bad habit. Better than yelling. And Tapatio's isn't really that hot. :)
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