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Source: (consider it) Thread: Parenting for all ages
Gwai
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# 11076

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LC - Now that really is my favorite technique. Whenever she asks what she is eating--often planning to dislike it depending on what she thinks of the name--I tell her she's eating fried monster. Usually lby the time she finds out what the name really is, she's tried at least a bite and formed her own opinion, if only because she wants to guess what kind of food it really is.

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528

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Ooh, lovely! I shall remember fried monster the next time my son asks what's for dinner. [Devil]

The one we always get is "Where are we Go-O-o-o-ing???" in a whiny voice.

To which the answer is naturally,

"To the moon."

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Keren-Happuch

Ship's Eyeshadow
# 9818

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KGlet1 hates being asked what he's done at school or out with grandparents etc. He likes his little secrets. So, the other day I asked him if he'd been to the moon with Granny. He found it hilarious, but ages later KGlet2 confused everyone by announcing that "KGlet1 and Granny drove to the moon!"...

So, careful who's listening! [Big Grin]

--------------------
Travesty, treachery, betrayal!
EXCESS - The Art of Treason
Nea Fox

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Lamb Chopped
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Still better than "Grandma mooned Kglet..." which is what you might get at certain stages of language development. [Big Grin]

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Panda
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# 2951

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Argh...just wanted to share the sheer frustration of Things Getting Lost.

4-yo has apparently picked up my nice new, interestingly hinged, Filofax hole punch (I am a new convert to a filofax and am enjoying putting my own bits and pieces in) and engineered its disappearance into thin air. 7-yo may or may not have been around/aware, but No-one Can Remember.

Asking a 4-yo to remember where he put something, or where he was when he had it last is clearly futile; their brains just don't work that way. So it's my luck to overturn all the toy boxes, craft drawers etc until a 6-inch piece of black plastic turns up.

Gaa...nothing to be done. Just glad of the space to come here and moan. Please continue!

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Lamb Chopped
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I will. Mine has just lost his retainer! And Dad can't get all righteous about it, as he's lost the remote control. Again.

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Jemima the 9th
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Can I add to the never-ending losing of things moan too, please?
We're doing the library scheme - you know, you read 6 books over the course of the summer hols, get stickers etc. All very lovely & a highlight of our summer hols usually.
Can Child B find the book she wants to talk about? Nope. Can she remember what it's called? Nope. Eventually it is found, in a random place - not even I can remember now.
Can Child A find the book she wants to talk about? No.
They are 6 & 9 now and I don't think it's unreasonable for them to look after their stuff better. I think we will have to have stricter places for things - library books to go in bedrooms asap, and the sticker card in the school letters file.
But then...I can see the new library books on the arm of the sofa where they've been dipping in and out inbetween olympic watching, and it's nice that they do that.

Thing is I know what I'd like to do, which is to be tidier myself & set a good example and be patient when things are lost. I'm just a bit crap at doing it.

Anyway. I know they say you get more trips to A&E with a boy, but I wasn't expecting it to start at 8 weeks. I dropped my bag (keys, purse, phone, new hardback book) on his head whilst getting him out of his car seat. He yelled, which I took to be a good thing, but seeing as I was home alone and there was no MrJt9 to encourage rationality, I took him to A&E for a check-over. He was fine. [Big Grin] I am now even more neurotic about bumped baby's heads than I was before...

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the famous rachel
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My 20 month old doesn't lose his things - he hides mine! Currently, I am missing one handset for our landline phone (thankfully we have another) and a small alarm clock. I know when he hid the alarm clock, and I am pretty sure it must be in my bedroom somewhere, or at the very least upstairs, but I can't find it! I'm guessing that it's in a drawer, and I have put other things in on top of it by mistake...

R.

--------------------
A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.

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Tom Day
Ship's revolutionary
# 3630

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quote:
Originally posted by the famous rachel:
My 20 month old doesn't lose his things - he hides mine! Currently, I am missing one handset for our landline phone (thankfully we have another) and a small alarm clock. I know when he hid the alarm clock, and I am pretty sure it must be in my bedroom somewhere, or at the very least upstairs, but I can't find it! I'm guessing that it's in a drawer, and I have put other things in on top of it by mistake...

R.

Our youngest (2 1/2) has taken out the smart card from our set top box and put it somewhere. During the olympics. Which means that we can just watch the terrestrial channels. Not the red button coverage. Dad not amused!

This is after he lost the remote control a few months ago (think it went in the recycling before we noticed it was missing) Grrr

Tom

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My allotment blog

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Uncle Pete

Loyaute me lie
# 10422

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[Big Grin]

Am I happy I'm a grandfather?

You betcha!

[Big Grin]

But back in the day, some things just went AWOL and I still don't know what the heck they did with them!

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Even more so than I was before

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Gwai
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Speaking of which, Gnome came to tell me her pennies (that we use to do math) were lost. After one of those discussions that are so unhelpful that you know they've done something bad, it turned out she'd lost them out the window. Now our windows have no bars and are 3rd floor, so they are way off limits. She obeys re keeping distance etc, but the forbidding unfortunately makes the windows more interesting. Apparently she threw the pennies one by by one out. I'm just picturing what it must have looked like to passersby. (Busy enough street that there very well may have been one.)

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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Moth

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I remember an advert from when mine were small in which a harassed father is phoning a motoring rescue organisation and at the same time questioning his son 'But where did you bury the car?', to which the answer is 'In the sand!'. Cut to shot of large beach ...

It really doesn't seem too far fetched once you've been a parent!

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"There are governments that burn books, and then there are those that sell the libraries and shut the universities to anyone who can't pay for a key." Laurie Penny.

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Panda
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Oh yes! If you don't intercept him, our 4-yo will happily bury every single sand toy he has on the beach, and then finish up by interring the spade with his bare hands. We lost some toys that came with the cottage we hired in Brittany a few months ago.

At least with a 20-month old, there is a height limit on where you have to look for things. Or is he a piano-climber?

[ 08. August 2012, 20:13: Message edited by: Panda ]

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Antisocial Alto
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# 13810

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Another small gripe for the list: last week we finally took the sides off our 2-year-old's crib to make it a toddler bed. So of course he's dismantling his room every time he's supposed to be sleeping, because it's so interesting to be able to get out of the bed and play with things.

During one "naptime" he took every single ****ing toy and piece of clothing out and threw them on the floor. And unscrewed all the knobs on his bureau. Thank God we hid the diaper pail.

I'm hoping that making him put all the things away himself, every time he pulls things out, is going to help this new pastime lose its novelty pretty quickly.

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Uncle Pete

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Don't hold your breath, dear.

[Big Grin]

--------------------
Even more so than I was before

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the famous rachel
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quote:
Originally posted by Panda:
Oh yes! If you don't intercept him, our 4-yo will happily bury every single sand toy he has on the beach, and then finish up by interring the spade with his bare hands. We lost some toys that came with the cottage we hired in Brittany a few months ago.

At least with a 20-month old, there is a height limit on where you have to look for things. Or is he a piano-climber?

He hasn't climbed the piano yet... but he's climbed pretty much everything else, and is also very tall for 20 months, so the range of heights he can reach is greater than one might anticipate!

R.

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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.

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Lothlorien
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My third son climbed the piano at 16 months. Fortunately I found him before he tried to get down.

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Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.

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birdie

fowl
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I'm glad the subject of beaches has come up, albeit tangentially.

Tips to help us get it into the head of our 7 year old that You Do Not Run Away On The Beach. Ever. We're now living on the coast, and the beach is very much going to be a part of every day life. Groover is loving it, but behaving very badly when we go to the beach. Whenever we tell him off, we get some variation of 'but I forgot I mustn't do X'. The worst thing is when it's time to go, and he doesn't want to, he just runs away. We've explained time and time again how he mustn't do this, and that the beach is not a totally safe place, and every time we go through this, he's very sorry and won't do it again. Until, obviously, the next day, when we go to the beach...

My usual tactic with bad behaviour when we're out is just to say 'right, that's it, we're going home', and to go, but that's more difficult when going home is exactly what we're trying to do anyway. We could tell him that if he does it again, we won't be going to the beach again but that is a)not immediate enough - the idea of something not happening tomorrow is not enough to have any effect on him; b)not very fair on his sister or the rest of us as we all love the beach; and c)likely to be met with 'well I don't care. I hate the beach anyway!' (Did I mention he's 7 going on stroppy teen?).

Any tips before I finally flip my lid would be great.

(He was a climber when he was little. I once found him on top of the television.)

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"Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness."
Captain Jack Sparrow

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Enigma

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I know nothing about bringing up children and if I had a hat I would raise it to all of you!!

That being said ---- I wonder in the case of Groover whether it would be possible to hide somewhere when he runs off (though still keeping him in view of course) so that he becomes a little concerned that he might be left behind if he doesn't conform to family expectations?

Possibly too risky though. Prayers for you all as you negotiate the thorny paths of parenthood.

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Who knows? Only God!

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Aravis
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# 13824

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When my daughter was about a year old she hid both our alarm clocks one evening. We searched everywhere. In the end we gave her an old one that didn't work, to see what she'd do, and she carefully posted it into the narrow gap under the divan bed.

We then found the others there, though it wasn't easy to get them out.

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Panda
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Hi Birdie, I think the answer is for you to impose a punishment as soon as possible after you get home, that isn't related to the beach (for the reasons you mention) and that doesn't come as a surprise, but a natural cause-and-effect.

I find I get a lot further with my 7 and 4-yo old boys when I explain things in advance, including what will happen if they misbehave. 'If you run off at the beach, you will go straight to your room (naughty step/corner/whathaveyou) for 10 minutes as soon as we get home.' Then you must enforce it, absolutely the moment you come through the door so that there's no wiggle room.

I would probably take away TV time or computer time for the rest of the day for something like that if it were me. Then the next time you go to the beach you can have a reasonable discussion along the lines of 'What happened last time you ran off? Did you like that? No? Well then, you know what to do.' And if does happen again you respond in exactly the same way and there's no room for doubt. I find twice usually does it.

At the same time, can you allow a certain amount of running, but with clear limits? 'You can run, but when you get to that blue towel/bit of wood you have to come back. Can you show me - ready, go!' I think they train dogs like this... [Biased]

[ 11. August 2012, 19:05: Message edited by: Panda ]

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Pants

Emergency underwear
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Extendable dog lead.

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I use £6m of military hardware to find hidden Tupperware in the woods.

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the famous rachel
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quote:
Originally posted by Aravis:
When my daughter was about a year old she hid both our alarm clocks one evening. We searched everywhere. In the end we gave her an old one that didn't work, to see what she'd do, and she carefully posted it into the narrow gap under the divan bed.

We then found the others there, though it wasn't easy to get them out.

Bother - I should have tried this straight after he hid the first one (which is still missing). If I give him another one to hide, and surreptitiously watch him, he will inevitably have found a new hiding place by now!

Rachel.

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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.

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Gwai
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# 11076

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Now if I could just figure out what my daughter keeps doing to her bedtime book. I read it to her before I put her to bed, and she loves it. So much so that she keeps "reading" it at naptime and losing it!

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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Lothlorien
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# 4927

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quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
Now if I could just figure out what my daughter keeps doing to her bedtime book. I read it to her before I put her to bed, and she loves it. So much so that she keeps "reading" it at naptime and losing it!

Does she post the book between the headboard of bed and the mattress?

--------------------
Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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quote:
Originally posted by birdie:
The worst thing is when it's time to go, and he doesn't want to, he just runs away. <snip> Any tips before I finally flip my lid would be great.

I would consider telling him that big kids stay where they're supposed to be, and don't run off when it's time to go. Since big kids do that, they can have a great deal of freedom at the beach. Since beaches can be dangerous places, little children have to stay very close to their parents, so they don't get hurt.

You're going to have to treat him like a little kid until he can show you that it is safe to treat him like a big kid.

That does mean that, for the next few outings to the beach, you'll have to treat him like a 2-year-old. He has to stay right next to you. That will be tiresome for both of you. But he should decide, pretty quickly, that he can act like a big kid. Let him earn more freedom. If he goes back to the old ways, you clamp down again.

Good luck!

--------------------
I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Haydee
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LC - it's an old discussion on this thread, but have you tried any relaxation techniques with LL?

A friend has a daughter who gets very anxious at all sorts of apparently minor things. They made a mental 'safe place' (in her case lying on a warm beach and hearing the waves) - what can you see, hear, smell etc and then at quiet times practised 'going there' mentally for a few minutes while breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. When she could do that at quiet times she then practised in busy but non-anxious situations, then finally used it when she felt anxious.

It worked quite well, especially as it gave her a feeling of control, so helped her not to be anxious about getting anxious...

There are different relaxation techniques so it might be worth a bit of research and see if any could be good for your son.

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nomadicgrl
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Is there any hope that the "I was just...." stage of response will end soon? My two and a half year old has an "I was just....." answer to any redirection we give him. He can get very creative with them too... In one recent case he was on a "Why" kick and every answer I gave to his questions was met with "Why" until I finally reached the breaking point and said "S. that's enough. I don't want you to ask 'why' anymore when I give you an answer, no more 'whys'. Do you understand?" Hardly a moment's pause and he looks at me and says "I was just saying the letter Y aloud to myself, that's all". (Admittedly I did have to laugh at that one) ...
I know that it's probably too much to hope for a repentant "Yes Mommy, I see the error of my ways and will reform them", but surely not every correction or request needs to be met with a "I was just..." justification? It's just a phase. Right?

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The care of another,even material, bodily care is spiritual in essence. Bread for myself is a material question; bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.- Jacques Maritain

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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528

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It's a Phase.

If you want to shorten it, you can find a way to respond creatively.

YOU: ....

Him: "I was just..."

YOU (wide-eyed and over-acting): Really? REALLY? That's funny, because I was just about to feed you some cheese! [insert other mildly hated activity]

As the protests start, look actively disappointed and say:

"Oh well, I guess if you don't want cheese, you'll have to do x instead." (where x is whatever you told him to do or stop doing)

Lather, rinse repeat, until he does as told.

Annoy him this way every single time, and pretty soon the new topic of conversation will be how strange you are, and not "I was just..." [Devil]

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528

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quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
LC - it's an old discussion on this thread, but have you tried any relaxation techniques with LL?

A friend has a daughter who gets very anxious at all sorts of apparently minor things. They made a mental 'safe place' (in her case lying on a warm beach and hearing the waves) - what can you see, hear, smell etc and then at quiet times practised 'going there' mentally for a few minutes while breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. When she could do that at quiet times she then practised in busy but non-anxious situations, then finally used it when she felt anxious.

It worked quite well, especially as it gave her a feeling of control, so helped her not to be anxious about getting anxious...

There are different relaxation techniques so it might be worth a bit of research and see if any could be good for your son.

I have looked into this, as I hear it's very useful for some people. (In fact I was looking for me, to start with...)

I have to say, though, that I haven't found anything that works very well for me at all, except maybe sometimes prayer. None of the visualization, physical exercises, etc. I could find. And I've talked to several professionals, but none had anything more effective to offer. All of which maybe makes me an oddball, so I can't say it won't work for LL--but now the school counselor has tried this stuff with my son too, and is having the same zip zero effect. I begin to wonder if it's physically based, and we have some kind of hormonal imbalance or something that isn't much affected by mental work.

I've finally given up on that and instead resorted to using his one undeniably major asset, his intelligence--and am now teaching him to THINK all his worries to death, through relentless self-questioning, Socratic style-- on the grounds that if a little thinking got you into this mess, a lot of it may push you out the other end (or at least bore you into calmness). We're having a lot more success with this approach. I wonder why they don't teach it in counseling school? [Devil]

--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Welease Woderwick

Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424

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LC - have you read Susan Jeffers' Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway? She takes a similar approach to you at one point, talking about sitting with the fear and working out what is the worst that can happen - it can quickly, in my case, descend into plain absurdity and make me smile, even if I don't want to!

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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?

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Haydee
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# 14734

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quote:
Originally posted by nomadicgrl:
In one recent case he was on a "Why" kick and every answer I gave to his questions was met with "Why" until I finally reached the breaking point and said "S. that's enough. I don't want you to ask 'why' anymore when I give you an answer, no more 'whys'. Do you understand?" Hardly a moment's pause and he looks at me and says "I was just saying the letter Y aloud to myself, that's all". (Admittedly I did have to laugh at that one) ...
?

I allow my 5 year old one sensible answer to a 'why?' - after that I just say 'why not?' and give her the task of coming up with an answer. It's working quite well at the moment! Though I'm sure she'll move onto something else soon...
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Curiosity killed ...

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I used to answer why questions when they were really asking how the world worked, including for all 2 hours of one train journey where we covered farming, geology, weather, watersheds, river formation ... including "I'm not sure, remind me to look it up when we get home", but when they got to that stage the answer to "Why?" is "Z"

And the "but I was just ....", I can remember the grin - and "And I was just ..." answers. I don't remember that one lasting that long, but I do remember her getting upset about having to stop doing something she was involved and interested in. What you might need to do is warn in advance - so discuss what needs to be done that day and when the time comes to do whatever give a 10 minute warning beforehand. "Remember that we have to go out to ... . We are going in 10 minutes, can you finish off what you're doing please so we can go." Then you have to have the discussion again in 10 minutes.

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Roseofsharon
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There are a couple of meanings to the phrase "I was just..."

One is a delaying tactic, meaning "I'm a bit busy at the moment, I'll (maybe) do what you ask after I've finished"

Another is a justifying tactic, meaning "you are misinterpreting my innocent remark, and I wasn't really being rude/silly/disobedient" - which is the version I think nomadicgirl is up against.

The advance warning can help with the delaying tactic, but I think you have to become as inventive in your response to the justifying tactic as the child is with his justification

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Jengie jon

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Nomadic girl my mum's retort to too many whys was

"Y is a crooked letter and you can't make it straight."

Save it up for next time as he can't then plead he was just saying "Y" out loud.

Jengie

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Haydee
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# 14734

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As my older one is 13 - and that's a whole different degree of 'yes, but...', 'why...' and stomping around - I do quite like the 5-year-old version. Enjoy it while it lasts - it gets worse before it gets better [Snigger] .
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Taliesin
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# 14017

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quote:
I've finally given up on that and instead resorted to using his one undeniably major asset, his intelligence--and am now teaching him to THINK all his worries to death, through relentless self-questioning, Socratic style-- on the grounds that if a little thinking got you into this mess, a lot of it may push you out the other end (or at least bore you into calmness). We're having a lot more success with this approach. I wonder why they don't teach it in counseling school?

Yes, I always did this with the children's worries, that we would think through the worst things that could happen, and how we could deal with it if it did. The major problem is that the worst thing that could usually happen is that X wouldn't like him/her, and not only is there no solution to that, if my child feels that the world will end if they are disliked by person X, how do I combat that?

It worked very well for more tangible worries.
And for mine!!

the calm/happy place doesn't work for anyone I know. I bought a book on visualisations for children... yeah, no.

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Uncle Pete

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I can't believe that children have no issues since October. Are they getting ready for Christmas? Or has everyone moved to Special Needs thread?

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Smudgie

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The calm happy place used to work for my boys with bedtime worries, but only if I did it, so it was probably as much a case of my presence in the room and my voice helping them to relax. They used to choose a location and then I'd "talk the picture" to them, and they'd invariably stop worrying and fall asleep. It was something they'd ask me to do if they needed some help calming down... "Mummy, can you take me to the forest?"

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the famous rachel
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# 1258

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quote:
Originally posted by the famous rachel:
quote:
Originally posted by Aravis:
When my daughter was about a year old she hid both our alarm clocks one evening. We searched everywhere. In the end we gave her an old one that didn't work, to see what she'd do, and she carefully posted it into the narrow gap under the divan bed.

We then found the others there, though it wasn't easy to get them out.

Bother - I should have tried this straight after he hid the first one (which is still missing). If I give him another one to hide, and surreptitiously watch him, he will inevitably have found a new hiding place by now!

Rachel.

Breaking news - alarm clock mysteriously reappeared in the middle of the bedside cabinet yesterday. The famous toddler must have found it and put it back at some point during the day!

More relevantly, perhaps, the happy place thing works for me when I'm in the middle of an uncomfortable situation (for example I used it earlier in the week during a medical procedure, to relax and ignore the discomfort) but is no use for stopping me fretting about stuff, nor for getting to sleep.

To prevent myself worrying enough to get to sleep I play word games. For example, I used to use the geography game, although I'm bored with it at the moment: you think of a place name, e.g. "Manchester" and then the next place name has to begin with the last letter of the previous place - hence "R" so perhaps "Rhyll" then "London" then "Nigeria" etc. We used to play this in primary school, sat in a circle, with one child thinking of the place name and then the next having to use its last letter etc.

Anyway, I digress, but I wonder if some simple games of this type might help your son, LC? Sometimes, I just need an activity which will stop my spiralling panicky thoughts and allow me to reset.

Best wishes,

Rachel.

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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.

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