Remember way back when Fiona was a baby and I would go on and on about the wonderful “class” i attended called first weeks and the wonderful woman who moderated the class…answered all of our questions and assured us all that “This Too Shall Pass” ? It’s been months since I’ve been able to attend her weekly get togethers…and actually Fi is too old to even go anymore. I’ve been missing her guidance and her reassurance…not to mention the great things you learn sitting in a room full of parents with kids your own age. So a month or so ago I contacted her to see if she would be interested in talking to a group of us about toddler discipline….or as we coined it…guidance. There were many other parents who were excited about this opportunity so once Ann agreed to do it we easily found a full house. We all met last Sunday and talked with Ann for a couple of hours about what stages our kids were in and how we can start now to set them (and us) up for a successful future. We learned a lot of interesting things….as usual one of the best things I learned is that pretty much everyone is experiencing the same issues so it’s all “normal” =) She had some very interesting things to think about…one of which is that she doesn’t believe in the time-out method. I found that pretty interesting because that’s all you hear about these days…if you hadn’t heard it before one night of watching Super Nanny and it’s ingrained in you. Her thoughts (and she offered a book called ,“Being the Parent You Want To Be” that discusses it further) is that by removing the children from the situation removes them from learning about their mistakes. The focus becomes about sitting in the chair or being in time out…and if you have a spirited child that day the focus could become about a physical power struggle to keep the child in the spot you told them to stay in. It’s always interesting to hear a different point of view!
We also talked about repeating what we learned from our parents and how it’s difficult to step back and look at how you were disciplined and decide if that’s what you want to do or if you want to handle things differently and then setting your own rules to follow. I catch myself already saying things and doing things when if I think about it they’re either not important to me or I would actually do it differently…it’s just ingrained.
Anyway…the talk was great. It was good to see and hear thoughts from different people and to get ann’s guidance once again. We’re trying to get off on the right foot…but then we are only parents.
