I came downstairs this morning to change Daniel’s diaper and found a box of cereal, a gallon of milk, and a mostly-eaten bowl of cereal on the table. The kids were all in the playroom jumping on the bean bag couch.
As I took Daniel over to the changing table, I called out an observation: “I see milk and cereal on the table.” I heard Carter accuse Logan*, who denied the accusation. Carter is not a very reliable witness, but I was still pretty sure that Logan was the culprit. He’s the most likely kid to have served himself cereal for breakfast plus I had seen him leave out the milk and cereal several times yesterday.
As I continued with the diaper change, I said, “I don’t want the milk to go bad. I don’t want Daniel to dump out the cereal.” The kids continued to jump and play in the playroom with no indication that they’d heard me.
After I finished the diaper change, I went into the playroom and quietly looked at Logan until I caught his eye. Then in a firm voice, I said, “There’s milk and cereal on the table.”
He immediately walked over to clean it up, commenting, “I didn’t do it.” I followed him as he put everything away and said, “Thank you for fixing the problem. You are a problem buster!”
There were a few drops of milk and cereal on the table so I got a wipe and said, “I’ll wipe the table. We are a good team.” He agreed and went back to play.
I love that I was able to have Logan take responsibility (in actions if not in words) for a problem without any yelling, blaming, or arguing. Just neutral observations, physical presence and teamwork. This is how I want to parent so I’m always happy when I do it!
*Names of foster kids have been changed to protect their privacy.
Luke has been building some elaborate train layouts lately. Earlier today, I remarked that he and Nathan have been able to play with (or at least near) each other surprisingly well. It used to be that as soon as Luke put together a train track of any significant length, Nathan would come over and shake it all apart.
Now Nathan is old enough that he also likes to put train tracks together and push trains around. The only problem is that sometimes he plops himself down right in the middle of where Luke’s trying to build, and he brings his own ideas of where the tracks should go. Also, sometimes Nathan just wants to roll around on the floor where the tracks are, nuzzle his head under Luke’s arm while Luke is reaching for a piece, and generally make a nuisance of himself.
(I didn’t get a picture of Nathan with the trains tonight so here’s a picture of him helping himself to Luke’s stash of carefully-unwrapped Hershey’s kisses.)
Luke is understandably frustrated when Nathan interferes like this but his attempts to guard his train track tonight were going too far. Luke was pushing Nathan hard enough to topple him over backwards, in addition to yelling at him and sometimes kicking at his legs when they got in his way.
My first response was to tell Luke that it wasn’t working for him to play with train tracks right now and that he’d have to find something else to play with.
This did not go so well for me because Luke was very resistant to stopping with the trains. I could see that if I continued escalating, I’d have to spend the rest of the evening enforcing time-outs and I wouldn’t be able to get any work done.
I tried to think of a different approach and remembered the problem-solving steps from How to Talk so Kids Will Listen. I hadn’t used this technique in awhile but it seemed like a good fit for the situation. We all wanted Luke to be able to play with trains but we needed a peaceful solution to the problem of Nathan’s interference that would also allow me to get my work done.
I started by bringing Luke downstairs, out of sight of the train tracks. I locked the door behind us so he would realize it was futile to try to squirm away from me. He was not getting those trains back until I was ready! That helped him calm down and pay attention to what I was trying to tell him.
I told him that I understood that he had a problem with Nathan messing with his train tracks but that he was not being safe by pushing Nathan so roughly. I told him we were going to write down a big list of ideas for how to solve the problem and he came over to the table to watch me write. Nathan sat on my lap to help decorate the page.
I started by writing down the problem: Nathan is Messing Up Luke’s Train Tracks
As the first idea I put the solution Luke had been using: 1. Luke is pushing, kicking and yelling no at Nathan.
Then I put down one of my own ideas: 2. Luke could build a train track in the boundary.
When Luke voiced objections I reminded him that first we were going to write down as many ideas as we could think of and then afterward we would talk about whether or not we liked them.
He didn’t want to contribute any ideas at first so I wrote a few more of my own: 3. Luke could build a train track in the playroom. 4. Luke could pause with the train track and un-pause when Nathan goes to bed.
Then Luke had an idea: 5. Luke could stop Nathan by telling Mommy to stop him.
I put a few more of my own: 6. Luke could give Nathan a train piece and show him where to put it. 7. Luke could play with Legos in the boundary.
Finally Luke wanted to tell me another idea but he couldn’t think of anything. I reminded him of an idea he’d suggested earlier, when I was telling him he couldn’t play with trains anymore: 8. Luke could stop Nathan by putting the gate at the top of the stairs.
After we’d both run out of ideas, we switched to talking through the ideas we’d already written down to see if there were any that we both liked. I put smiley and frowny faces to record our feelings about each idea.
Luke shot down all of my ideas and I wrote down his concerns: the boundary is too small, the playroom has too many toys and even if I helped him clean them up, he wouldn’t remember how to rebuild his train track after moving it downstairs.
The only ideas Luke approved of were his own so we discussed my concerns: How would I get my work done if I had to stop Nathan every time he got in Luke’s way? Wouldn’t Nathan be sad if we put up a gate to stop him from coming upstairs where all the rest of us were? I told Luke that I was willing to give the gate idea a try but if Nathan cried, we’d have to pick something else from the list to do instead.
This gave Luke another idea: he could build Nathan a train track in the kitchen so he would not be sad about being stuck downstairs. Luke made a plan (“I’ll make a highway that goes up on one side and down on one side”) and then went off to collect the pieces he needed.
It was very sweet to see Luke building a train track for his little brother, but we never did get to test the gate idea. While Luke was still building his highway, Nathan got sleepy and I put him to bed.
(We’ll have to show this to Nathan tomorrow.)
With Nathan asleep, Luke had plenty of time to work on his own layout upstairs with no more little brother interruptions! I think the track he built might be bigger than anything he’s made before.
I was very happy with Luke’s willingness to work with me on a solution and I hope to do more collaborative problem-solving with him in the future!
When I find a good blog, I read it cover-to-cover — I dig up the very first post and just grind my way through automatically. What I’ve noticed though this practice is how blogs change as they become popular and monetized. The balance shifts away from sharing interesting personal anecdotes and toward more and more product recommendations.
For instance, here’s an old How We Montessori post about making discovery baskets for a 10-month-old. Kylie says, “I don’t want to purchase any new items so typically I am looking around the house for something interesting” and then gives a few examples: kitchen utensils, big brother’s farm animals, assorted brushes, finger puppets. It’s wonderful!
Go count the affiliate links in this other discovery basket post that she wrote six years later after her blog had really taken off. There are a total of eight product links in a single post. Even the baskets are fancy and expensive! The whole point of this post is to encourage people to buy more stuff for their babies, and this is typical of her posts in the last few years. (Do read her early posts though; they’re wonderful!)
I’ve seen myself influenced by this mindset of “solve this problem by spending money to buy a product” instead of being more resourceful and finding ways to get the job done with the time and materials I already have on hand. It’s especially tempting when life feels overwhelming and I feel low on time and energy. The problem is, I end up buying stuff that I never use.
I bought a can of Febreze to get the dog smell out of a second-hand beanbag chair. The only time I’ve touched that can is to put it on the bathroom shelf and to move it out of the way to access other items on the shelf.
I ordered two wall-mounted toothbrush holders to protect our toothbrushes from getting knocked over onto the floor or into the toilet. It’s been over a year and those new toothbrush holders are still in their original packaging in the bathroom closet.
Way back when we had our first foster care placement, I spent $70 on a kid table because I was tired of pushing the high chair in and out. Three weeks later, both kids could climb in and out of the high chair without any help from me.
So now when I read popular blogs I have to remember that these people are getting paid to write these posts. I can’t let their pictures shape my view of what’s realistic any more than I can let magazine and catalog pictures tell me what my life should look like. It’s all very beautiful and appealing, but when I add up the sticker price of each item in those photos, I realize just how unattainable it is. I don’t need to spend my time looking at that.
Elaine and Adele give very practical advice – I love their suggestions for how to give the kids just the right amount of support to figure out their own solutions. I also love the collaborative problem-solving process they lay out. I really value thinking creatively to find solutions that work for everybody, rather than imposing a quick-fix solution from on high.
One passage in particular stood out to me:
When parents take the stance: “In this house I’m the one who’s going to decide who has to share, who gets to keep; what’s reasonable, what’s unreasonable; who is right, who is wrong,” the children end up becoming more dependent upon the parent and more hostile towards their siblings.
What eases the tension, what makes harmony possible, is the attitude of “Who needs what? . . . Who feels what? . . . What solutions can be worked out that take everyone’s feelings and needs into account?”
Siblings Without Rivalry, p. 156–157
This section resonated with me because of a recent conflict at church. Claudiu and I are taking a leadership class. We don’t consider Nathan to be ready for the nursery so we’ve been bringing him to class with us. This worked fine a few months ago but as Nathan’s gotten older he’s also gotten more active and vocal. Last week a few of our classmates found his presence distracting but rather than approaching me directly with their concerns, they talked to a couple of the pastors who relayed the message to me.
The best option I can see given the circumstances is for me to drop out of the class. I wish we could find a better solution, but since I have not been put in touch with the people who’ve been affected, my ability to problem-solve is limited. I’m frustrated that the pastors encouraged this “appeal to authority” behavior by saying “No worries, we’ll talk to them about it” instead of “Well, have you talked to Celeste and Claudiu about your concern?”
All this has gotten me thinking about the wider ramifications of our parenting choices. This “go straight to the pastor” mentality is the grown-up version of “Mommy, he’s bugging me.” I don’t want my kids to feel like they have to go tell the pastor or the teacher or the boss or the homeowner’s association when they have an issue with one of their peers. I’d rather they take the Matthew 18 approach and bring up their concerns with the other person first:
“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.”
Jesus (Matthew 18:15–16)
I don’t want to judge anyone too harshly. I know how hard it is to bring up conflict with somebody directly, especially if you barely know them. It takes a lot of courage and I usually wimp out and try to ignore the problem rather than addressing it.
I can work to overcome my fear of conflict by choosing to speak up about a problem even when I’m tempted to brush it off because “it’s not a big deal.” If I ignore all the small opportunities to practice working through conflict with other people, I won’t have any experience to inform me when a bigger issue comes along. But if I take action when the stakes are low, I will build up my own confidence and be ready for more serious matters.
As Isabel and Luke come to me with complaints about each other, I can lead them though a problem-solving process with the long-term goal of equipping them to solve their own problems without input from me. Their problems might seem small from an adult perspective, but each instance is an opportunity for my kids to grow in their ability to speak up about their feelings with confidence and respect, listen well to each other, and work together to seek out solutions that are good for everyone.
Basically, we try not to interfere, but when we must step in, it’s always with the thought that at the earliest possible moment we want to turn the children back to dealing with each other. That’s the best preparation we can give them for the rest of their lives.
Less than three weeks after Nathan was born, Claudiu and I said yes to a foster care referral call and welcomed seven-year-old Sophie and three-year-old Jackson* into our home. They were with us for exactly one month before the county decided to move them to a different foster home to be with their little brother. We were sad to say goodbye, but also relieved. Now that we’ve been through the experience of having four kids, dropping back down to just two feels like easy mode.
*I’ve chosen pseudonyms for the blog to protect our foster kids’ privacy.
My sister is right: there’s definitely a learning curve when it comes to doubling how many kids you have, especially when it’s only been three weeks since you last doubled. It was chaotic at times (okay, all the time) but it was also cool to see my parenting skills develop at a frantic pace. It all happened so quickly, with so little time for reflection, that the new skills I acquired seem to operate on a subconscious level. I call them my mom instincts.
Jumping from one kid to four required a shift in how I allocate my attention. I am naturally very good at tuning out distractions so I can focus deeply on the task at hand. This is a weakness when it comes to parenting a bunch of small children. I developed a habit of checking the location and activity of each kid every few minutes. Maintaining this ongoing awareness allowed me to nip trouble in the bud.
The Suspicious Sounds Instinct
The problem with constant vigilance was that it was not conducive for getting anything else done. On the other hand, neither was constantly cleaning up the messes of beans, dry macaroni, ketchup, poop and microbeads that developed during under-supervised play. A new instinct developed for those times when I was in the middle of cooking dinner, nursing the baby, or packing for an outing.
As various sounds bombarded my ears, including endless rounds of Jackson yelling “haa-haa” and Luke yelling “Luke!”, my brain would filter through the noise and direct my attention to any sounds that might indicate a mess in progress such as a splash of water in the bathroom, the crash of something falling off a bookcase, or an unusually long or sudden silence.
Sophie had a particular giggle that signaled mischief. I learned to drop whatever I was doing and go investigate as soon as I heard that giggle. I also learned how to get toothpaste out of the carpet.
The Head-Count Instinct
Whenever we took the kids to the playground, Claudiu and I were constantly interrupting our conversations to do a head-count. “Nathan… Luke… Sophie… – do you see Jackson? Nevermind, he’s over there on the slide.” (We always included one-month-old Nathan in the count, even though he never left my arms.)
When I was by myself my mental count was just as frequent. In spite of this, Luke still managed to get lost at the neighborhood park. I left my bench to fill up a water bottle and he wandered off in the other direction looking for me. He was only gone for five minutes before a helpful teenager brought him back to the playground, but boy was it scary. I realized I had never taught him to stay put if he got lost.
Since then I’ve discovered Kidpower – an organization with wonderful resources for teaching kids how to stay safe. I love the instructions they give in their safety comic book: “The first thing to do if you are lost is stand tall and still like the trunk of a tree. Look around to see if you can find your grown-up. The next thing to do is yell for your grown-up.” If Luke had known to use those skills, it would have saved me a lot of worry that afternoon!
The Mess-Potential Instinct
Evaluating the mess-potential of any particular item became second nature. I developed an internal heads-up display that sets its crosshairs on abandoned beverages and half-eaten applesauce pouches. “Target acquired. Initiate disposal procedure immediately.”
Some products received a permanent ban from the home. I made the mistake of buying drinkable spillable yogurt – never again. Ditto on the red jello cups. A well-meaning visitor left us a bottle of cranberry juice cocktail and I made the executive decision to pour all 64 fluid ounces down the drain. It wasn’t worth the stress, not for a measly 5% juice.
The Keep-the-Laundry-Moving Instinct
The great thing about our current place is that the washer and dryer are right in the kitchen. The downside is it’s a compact unit so the washer holds less than half of a normal-sized load and the dryer takes two or three cycles to get that mini load dry. With four kids, we were generating a minimum of four loads a day, often more. Laundry had to be running pretty much constantly so I learned to be highly aware of when the washer or dryer had stopped so I could transition a load.
At some point I realized that I didn’t have to wait until the dryer stopped to turn the knob back up to the maximum length of time. “You married a genius,” I said to Claudiu when I figured that one out. I also realized that even if the dryer was occupied and I didn’t have time yet to hang a load of wets, I could at least free up the washer for another load of dirties by stashing the wets in their own laundry basket. I could progressively fill a basket with multiple loads of wet laundry and hang it in one big batch at an opportune moment.
The Somebody’s Gunning for a Timeout Instinct
We faced a lot of sibling conflict, especially between Luke and Jackson. Lots of name-calling, poking each other, snatching toys, pushing and hitting. I started to develop a sense for when someone was about to earn themselves a timeout. (You know you’ve been dishing out a lot of timeouts when the kids make a game of one person sitting in the timeout chair while the other one counts backwards from ten and beeps.)
If I was paying attention to the warning signs, I could sometimes intervene to prevent the offense either by redirecting, coaching or physically blocking. If I was not quite on the ball or too far away, at least I could see with my own eyes who did what.
I had to counteract my natural tendency to ignore the unpleasant behavior and bad feelings. I guess when I was a kid, tuning out was my main coping strategy when my younger siblings fought with each other. But now that I’m the grown-up, I’m responsible! I had to learn to pay attention.
It’s a work in progress. I have a lot more to learn about how best to handle constant conflict between siblings. I often compromised my own values, letting behavior slide or defaulting to punishment because I didn’t have the energy or the wisdom to give a more productive response.
Gratuitous baby picture
Now that I actually have time in my life for reflection, I want to write more about the ways I responded to all the sibling conflict – both what worked and what didn’t. We could get another placement at any time and I want to be prepared. There’s a lot of work I can do now that will help to improve my instincts for the next time around.
Part of being a feelings expert involves recognizing that feelings are temporary and changeable. Instead of feeling helpless and overwhelmed by bad feelings, a feelings expert knows how to make choices that have a positive impact.
This is something I’m still learning. I have a tendency to ignore or tolerate mild feelings of frustration or physical discomfort, letting them build and build until finally I can’t take it anymore and I completely lose patience.
Claudiu is helpful in those moments because he reminds me to adopt a problem-solving mindset and figure out ways to address the underlying issues. Often I realize I need to eat something or put some deliberate effort into finding an activity to occupy Luke so I can take a break and relax all my muscles.
We want to teach Luke these problem-solving skills as well. Like any toddler, he is prone to collapsing on the floor in tears if something doesn’t go the way he wanted. In these situations, we’ve started asking him what would help him feel better.
When we first started asking this question, we’d suggest various things until he said yes to one of them: “Would reading a book help you feel better? How about some snuggling?” It usually didn’t take too long to land on an idea (often it was nursing) and pretty soon he was able to answer the question on his own.
Crying was his go-to answer for a while. If I was running through suggestions and he kept saying no, “Do you want to cry?” would usually get a yes!
Claudiu: Oh, did you fall? Luke: Yes. Claudiu: Do you know how to get up? Luke: No. Claudiu: Oh, poor Luke! [Luke cries] Claudiu: What would help you feel better? Luke: Crying. Claudiu: Crying would help you feel better? Luke: Yes. Claudiu: Ok, you can do some crying.
It’s been so cool to see Luke start to take initiative to make his own suggestions, even without being prompted. One day when he was 22 months old, I heard him fussing downstairs but didn’t come right away. A few minutes later he came up to find me.
Luke: Crying. Crying. Me: Were you crying? Luke: Yeah. Snuggeh eww. Me: You want to snuggle with me? Luke: Yeeeeah!
At 25 months, he had fully incorporated the language into his own vocabulary. He’d come to me saying things like, “Luke is frustrated. Read a book help feel better. Sit with Mommy help feel better.”
Another time I was dozing on the futon while Luke played with cars. He brought one over to me: “The car has a problem. Put in the hand. Give to Mommy help feel better.” And he put it in my hand. Then he brought me another car that was sad.
When Luke started throwing things out of frustration, Claudiu incorporated a new twist: “What gentle thing would help you feel better?” In these cases the answer is usually nursing.
Just the other day Luke was waiting impatiently for me to finish cooking dinner. Finally, he stood up in his chair and said, “Mommy, Mommy I’m in distress!” Claudiu asked him what would help him feel better and his response was, “Eat some egg noodles help feel better.” Good thing they were almost ready to serve!
The Daily Nurture 