You always hear people talk about “the terrible 2’s”. So needless to say when the 2’s arrived I put on my armor and felt as though I was prepared to fight the battle of the “terrible 2’s”. But the 2’s came and went and all those terrible things I was expecting to encounter, never came to be. So thinking I was pretty lucky, we progressed into the threes and still people told me to watch out, “threes are worse than the twos”. “So far, so good” I thought to myself. But then . . . . out of nowhere (about a month ago) it hit me like a Mac truck, all those yucky behaviors people had been warning me about, and I was in no way prepared to deal with them.
I feel as though we went from a comical, funny, sensitive, and laid back 3 ½ year old to one that talks back, says “no”, does things when he wants to, gets upset about sharing, etc. You name it, I feel like we have encountered it. So I started with time outs but that seemed be about as effective as speaking French to him. Then we tried taking things away when poor choices were made but that did nothing. We tried ignoring bad behaviors and giving them no attention, calm talks, making more time just for him thinking maybe he was feeling left out- you name it and we’ve tried it.
At this point I was in tears. Here is this kid I love so much and all I want to do is play with him and have great times together but instead it seems as though I spend all my time saying “no, don’t’, stop,” etc. Changing behaviors shouldn’t be this hard. Right?????? So finally I started thinking about being a teacher and wondering if there was anything I knew from teaching that could help me here. I started thinking about learning styles and how students learn things differently. Some students like to experience learning themselves, while others like to see it or hear it. And that got me thinking, “what kind of learner is Ben?” So after some thought and from what I know to be true about Ben, I have come to the conclusion that, for the most part, Ben is a visual learner. He likes to see how something works once and then try it himself. He loves to watch videos about animals on National Geographic and then tell people everything he learned. So now knowing that Ben is a visual learner, I got to thinking about various ways I could use that to help him make better choices and I came up with the behavior charts that I had posted about previously. Well we did a couple and they were working great.
The behaviors really started to change and I was super proud of Ben. So when he completed the second chart, like a dummy, I thought we could stop and the good behaviors would just keep coming. DUH! I must not have had enough coffee the day that thought crossed my mind because that is not what happened. So after a lot of frustration, I have decided that for now Ben just really needs the visual (a chart) of his choices. So I went to Lakeshore and made/laminated this new chart so that we can just keep using it over and and over again all we have to do is change the reward that he is working for.
This morning we showed it to Ben and he was really excited about it and here I sit at 830pm and I can honestly say that today was a good day. He was looking for ways to make good choices and be helpful to those around him and when a bad choice was made( which were really few) he saw and realized the effects. I gotta say, this mom stuff is hard and the age of 3 is really hard. But all this hard work is worth it because my boys are the loves of the life and there isn't anything I wouldn't do for them to encourage them and help them grow up to be men of character.
So while this life is crazy and far from perfect- it's my life, and I wouldn't trade it for the world! Plus the 4's have got to be a breeze... right? ;)
