How to Parent a Three Year Old

Advise for myself, mostly. 

Here's a few things I've learned about parenting 3 year olds, as I have one for the third time.

Three year olds scream.  They also reinvent reality. 

I tell the other kids "Don't argue with a three year old."  You'll never win.

I keep telling myself "she's three and that's what three year olds do."  Which is true.  It's also really important for me to remember that it's not personal.  So I just let it go most of the time.

Until I didn't.  Over the last few months, the occasional suggestion of a more polite way to phase something became a frequent suggestion, then a correction, then a barked order.  "Don't scream at me!" 

So much for modeling.

This too shall pass:  Three is a trying age for me.  I think because it's a transition between babyhood, and really getting to know their personalities and preferences as they change and grow.  I was reading an old journal the other day and ran across an entry about L when she was 3.  L is usually the most easy going kid, but three was tough with her too.

It's been a challenge for me with all three kids so far, but one thing that makes it easier is remembering that it will end.  Whatever stage they are in, at whatever age they are, can't last forever.

It's not her, it's me: She's doing what 3 year olds do.  Your kid is doing what kids that age do.  They are doing it because they don't know a better way to handle their emotions.

And sometimes neither do I.  Sometimes neither do you.

Which is why we are screaming back at them or avoiding them or tuning them out.  At least, that's why I do it.  I don't want to handle the emotions that crop up when I connect.  Being needed and the feeling of responsibility that comes with that.  The guilt when unconditional love is being poured out on me, even though I just screwed up royally 20 minutes ago.  Wanting to crawl out of my skin, because everyone is touching me and talking to me.  Overwhelmed.  Tired.  Scared that if I try to connect I'll screw it up, so I don't try.

Identify the need behind the feeling and meet it:  For me, one need is to be alone to process all the other needs and feelings.  Maybe for you it's getting a shower or getting outside or reading your book or talking with adults or counseling.

Some people champion getting those needs met no matter the cost.  "It's ok to leave him crying with a baby sitter for a few hours.  You NEED this.  You'll be a better parent when you come back."

Some people champion never trying to meet that need away from your kids.  "My child was never away from me until he was 12.  I just found ways to (insert need getting met) while he was with me."

Get your needs met.  I truly am a better parent when I get to be alone for a little while.

However, I don't do it at the cost of my kids needs not getting met.  I don't have to leave for hours.  I can catch 20 minutes while they are happy playing together or watching a show.  If I'm practicing awareness, I can notice those moments while I'm doing dishes or folding clothes when they aren't in the room.  And I can breath.

Sometimes I do leave for hours, but I'm fortunate that my kids are usually happy with D or their grandma.  That wasn't always the case, and sometimes I left anyway and I regret it.  Other times I didn't have anyone to watch them, and I got my alone time while they were sleeping or busy.

Get creative and find ways that work for everyone to meet their needs and yours.

Connect:  Surprise, surprise, when I connect with Z, the screaming, the "NO!", the neediness, all lessens.  Poor baby is going through a lot right now.  I was pregnant and having some health issues and solo parenting, and I didn't have the energy to do as much with her.  Now she has a new baby sister.  Her dad has been out of state for work since April, and she misses him so much.

She doesn't have all the words to express how sad and angry she is about all of that.

When people know better, they do better.  But even more than that, when people feel better they do better.

I said three is a time of transition.  That transition seems to last until about age five.  My goal is to smooth that transition.  To make it easier and more peaceful for her.  She's just barely starting to figure out who she is, what she likes, and how to relate to other people.  I want to explore that with her, and learn more about her and how to relate to her.

Take a minute to celebrate how far you've come:  I can really beat myself up sometimes over my parenting.  So I took a minute this morning to think about when E was 3.  I was struggling not to spank.  I was literally digging my nails into my hands or holding my own hands behind my back to stop myself from hitting sometimes.  And I didn't always succeed in resisting the impulse.

That's not a struggle any more.  It took years of personal work, but I've come a long, long ways.

Maybe you're years into this gentle parenting journey and need to look back and celebrate how far you've come.

Maybe you're just starting out and feel like there's nothing to celebrate yet.  Did you do better today than yesterday?  Did you do better this afternoon than this morning?  Celebrate it!

Or choose now, right this moment, to do better.  Whatever your child is doing, right now, think of two ways to respond to it and choose the better one.       

Reading and Relevance

I had a dream about unschooling last night.  Well, it wasn't so much a dream, with pictures or things happening, as it was my mind processing some thoughts.

Something that comes up frequently in unschooling discussions is the idea that with natural learning, people will learn what they need to know when they need to know it.  That things will click in their minds when those things are relevant to their lives. 

This is a really basic unschooling concept that I've believed for a long time.  I've seen many examples of it, not only with my unschooled kids, but also with schooled kids and adults.  You can tell someone something a hundred times, but it's not going to mean a thing to them until it needs to mean something to them.  Sure, we all pick up random facts (that's how we make connections later when they have relevance to our lives) and people can master rote memorization, but truly involved, enthusiastic learning happens when we have a personal, intrinsic need to know the information or how to do the skill.

So, my dream last night was about that, but more specifically about how it applies to E.  This year of unschooling was trying for me.  I wrote about Freaking Out and how my confidence returned after that.  But it wasn't the same level of confidence as I've had in the past.

Mostly because she's still not reading fluently.  She's reading better than she was a year ago.  She sounds out words when she writes notes to people or makes lists.  She writes in her diary.  She tells me words she sees on street signs.  Sometimes, she sees a word and makes a comment indicating she has read it, even though she didn't even realize she was reading!  And occasionally, she reads books.  She slowly and painfully makes her way through one word at a time, until she's read a page or two.

So she can do it, but it's slow, occasional, sporadic, frustrating, and never in front of anyone outside our family.

In my dream, I put two and two together.

She's not reading fluently or frequently yet, because it's not relevant to her yet.

And there are a TON of other things that ARE relevant to her.  Every moment I spend concerned about her reading ability, I am missing out on sharing those things with her instead.

It's the school system that says reading "should" be relevant to her at this age, and that survival skills (her latest interest) "should" be relevant to her at age.... well.... actually that never comes up in a public school curriculum.   

The other part of my dream was my mind reminding me that I always have choices.

I could put her in school, and she could be shamed and teased, or tested and found to be a failure or have some sort of problem, because of her reading ability.  And maybe she'd start reading better.... or not.   

I could go buy a curriculum and have her sit down every day and try to read through tears of frustration.   And maybe she'd start reading better.... or not.

Those are legitimate options that many parents choose to make.

They are not ones I can seriously consider.

Every moment that she spent in school or crying over a reading lesson at home, would be time she could be spending learning survival skills that would never even be touched on in school.  She'd be missing out on bonding with her grandpa over emergency bags, and learning money management while comparing pocket knife prices with me on Amazon.  She'd be missing out on learning real skills that could save her life.

She'd even be missing out on writing lists of survival gear which she did last week.

E with her BoB and camping knife/fork/spoon

Yep, tears over reading lessons could cause her to not have the time or desire to spend actually writing and reading for reasons that are truly, intrinsically her own.  How ironic.







Update:  I wrote this several days ago, but hadn't posted it yet, and right after that, we got E and L a phone.  They started using their dad's old phone, which is a better phone than my bottom-of-the-line flip phone.  That doesn't bother me one bit, because I had a feeling they'd want to text, and that is much easier with a keyboard.  Sure enough, reading and writing have much more relevance to her on a daily basis for the last few days.


 


 

Goal Setting

I discussed goal setting with my 7 year old the other day, because she has several things that she is involved in that she needs to practice.

She's doing 3 songs in this concert that she's doing. The rehearsals are twice a week, and the show is in 3 weeks, and her dancing is still pretty rough.

Then she has a performance with her ballet class coming up and that class is only once a week and they spend half the class doing barre work.

And she does dog club with 4-H once a month and they are doing a demonstration of their skills at the fair grounds soon.

Also, last year she did this one mile kids' fun run that is part of the larger 5k and 10k for adults. She said that this year she wanted to win, but since it is for kids 12 and under, I told her that might be pretty hard to compete against the 12 year olds, BUT that she could "beat herself." Last year she ran a little, then stopped, ran a little, then stopped. This year she wants to run the whole mile without stopping.

So, I suggested to her that we work on each of these things for a just a few minutes each day. Do each of the concert songs and the ballet songs once, walk the dog up and down the street once and have her sit/stay a few times, and run progressively further each day, starting with one time down the street and back, then two, then three and so on.

She liked that idea, so we've been doing all of those things every day for the last few days.*

*wrote on message board April 19

My Oldest is Reading!

I've been really lazy about blogging lately, but I posted this* on a message board and facebook page in March and just never transferred it here:

When E was 4, I blogged that I thought she was close to reading. She knew most of her letters and sounds and was very interested in trying. It didn't happen though. Her brain wasn't ready yet.

When she was 6, I thought she was close.  She was skills-wise, but not time-wise.  It has been a year since then. 

We have never done a "reading lesson." We have never done a curriculum or workbooks. There has never been a single tear over trying to read and I've never pushed her.

I've read many books to her since she was a baby. We've paid attention to the words in our lives- on signs, cereal boxes, labels, video games and everywhere else. She's played Starfall and similar games. I've told her the sounds of letters as she has been interested. We've played with magnet letters and banana grams. She's played with a few workbooks, and when I say played I really mean just that. The workbooks sit with the coloring books in our house and are treated the same way- use them if and when you want. We've played a reading flash card game the same way.  I just wrote some action words on index cars (play, dance, sing, etc) and when I'd hold one up, she'd read it and do the action.  It has been a fun, totally optional game that L has enjoyed as well.
 
However, I've never once sat down with her and said or implied, "Now it's time to try to learn to read."

A few weeks ago, she read The Foot Book and half of another book that was at the doctor's office and I don't remember the name of it. Some of The Foot Book was memorized, but she also sounded out a lot of words, and started picking up on some sight words.

Then she didn't do anything reading related for weeks, which is typical. She often has a big interest in something, then drops it for weeks or months, then picks it up again with sudden, new skills.

Yesterday, she was looking for The Foot Book and we couldn't find it. Today, I found it and handed it to her. She read it and then asked for more books to read. I pulled out Green Eggs and Ham and she read the whole thing!. I helped her with a few words that couldn't be sounded out and she didn't know from sight,
but other than that, she figured it out on her own while I just sat with her.

Her reading was interspersed every few sentences with, "Mom! I'm reading! Hehe! Yay! I'm reading! Hey you know what's more fun than watching tv? Me learning to read!"

(And on that note, we don't restrict tv watching and she could have chosen to do that instead with no pressure to do otherwise. Her sister was actually watching a movie in the same room the whole time she was reading the book. She chose to read).

*I changed some grammar and spelling issues and added a few more details from the original post.

Update:

It's been about 3 months since I wrote that, and she has not done a lot of book reading since then.  However, she is still doing a lot of reading related things.  She has read parts of recipes to me while we cook, read signs and labels, and played reading games.  She woke up one morning last week and immediately said she wanted to "play a game that will help me read better," so we did some sound flash cards.  Yesterday and today, we saw signs that said "stop" and "slow" while driving, and E,L and I started playing a game figuring out how to spell words that rhymed with stop and slow, based on how those two words are spelled.  So, since stop is S-T-O-P, they were able to figure out that cop is C-O-P and mop is M-O-P and so on with half a dozen other words.  Since slow is S-L-O-W, they were able to figure out row, bow, arrow, mow, and tow.      

Brushing Teeth

In the post Hair Brushing Is a Safety Issue, blogger Dulce de Leche talks about how a child knowing that their body boundaries are respected is more important than brushed hair.  I feel the same way about brushing teeth, though the consequences of unbrushed teeth are bit worse than unbrushed hair.  So I've found various ways over the years to keep tooth brushing interesting, fun and to get it done.

1.  The bacteria in their mouth screams "NO!  NO!  Don't brush me!" and you say "I'm going to get you!  Leave my child's mouth you yucky germs!  Out!  Out!"

Making brushing teeth fun usually gets the job done.  While the child is more focused on your silly voices and the idea that the germs in their mouth are talking while Super Hero Mom vanquishes them, you can do a quick job of actually destroying the buggers.


2.  Let them do it as much as they are able. 

As soon as they start grabbing for the tooth brush, I start letting them brush their own teeth when they want to.  I direct sometimes or do a quick job after they are done, but at least they get the satisfaction of trying to do it themselves.


3.  This one or that one, this kind or that kind.  Choices!

Have multiple tooth brushes and different kinds of toothpaste, xylitol and other options around.  You don't even have to use a toothbrush!  Try a soft cloth, your finger or even just mouthwash.  Make the choices more about how to get it done, then whether or not to get it done.


4.  Rock the baby to sleep while brushing.  Seriously!

My 6 year old and 4 year old have had the most fun lately pretending to be a baby while I brush their teeth and hair.  I sing them a lullaby while they lay on my lap and close their eyes, and I gently, slowly brush away.


5.  Make it about taking good care of our bodies.

It's not a power struggle.  It's not about obedience or compliance.  It's about giving them the skills to care for their own bodies and those skills take time to learn.  Maybe that's one reason their baby teeth fall out and they don't start getting permanent teeth until 6 or so.  By that age, they are a bit more capable of understanding the reasons to take care of them. 


6. Provide information.

I've told my kids that other people don't want to smell their stinky breath.  Don't do this in a shaming way, it's just information, but it can be useful information to know!


7. Be patient.  The teeth don't need to get brushed RIGHT NOW.  

It's really not going to make a difference if their teeth get brushed at 8 am or at noon right as you're leaving the house to go somewhere.  It doesn't matter if they get brushed right after dinner or as they are climbing into bed.


8.  Location, location, location.

Teeth don't have to be brushed in the bathroom!  Use the kitchen sink or do it in the shower. Or take a cup of water and a bowl to spit in and do it in front of the tv, in bed, outside or wherever they happen to be.


9. Don't stress!  They are probably going to get cavities anyway. 

Or not.  But I'm starting to think it has more to do with genetics, diet and dumb luck than brushing.  Some of the people I know with the healthiest teeth have the worst personal hygiene habits and some of the people I know who've had cavities have brushed regularly their whole lives.  Using all these tips and tools I just shared, my kids have all brushed their teeth consistently once a day and usually twice a day their whole lives.  All three have had/ will have dental surgery.  My 20 month old LOVES to have her teeth brushed.  She went through a period where she would stand outside the bathroom door and scream "TEETH!" multiple times a day and she would cry when I stopped brushing her teeth.  She has dental surgery coming up because her teeth are FAR worse than the other kids' were at this age.  

So if it's a question of getting teeth brushed vs. maintaining the trust and boundaries in the relationship, refer to Dulce's hair brushing post above.  

Radical Unschooling and Raw Foods

Or substitute "raw foods" for whatever your version of a healthy diet is.

Sound like an oxymoron? It was to me a few years ago.

I easily understood unschooling from an academic perspective, and it didn't take long for me to get it from a discipline perspective. But food and tv were hard to rethink and let go of the control!

Right around E's 3rd birthday, I made the jump and decided that I would not restrict food anymore. Up until then, I was a stressed out food-nazi, manically checking every label of everything that went into her mouth, ripping into my husband for giving her organic crackers or baby food instead of fruit, feeling like a horrible mother if we ate at a restaurant and she had the dreaded evil of evils- french fries!

I let that go (not over night, of course, it was a process that is still on going in some ways) and it felt so freeing. I realized that food was not something I needed to or should *control.* And that's really what it was all about. I had an ideal in my head that I wanted to live out, and the only way I saw to do that was to control the whole situation, my daughter and even other people who came in contact with her. It was under the guise of what was best for her, and I really did think I was doing it because I wanted her to be healthy. But I was over thinking physical health and entirely missing spiritual and emotional health for both of us. As with most things, the key is balance and being her partner, not her prison guard.

The last year has been so interesting watching the choices that E makes about her food. She does eat what some would consider "junk," but when I watch how she makes those choices, it's not about rebellion, fear that she'll never see it again, desperation, feeling deprived, emotional eating.... all the things that are symptoms of restriction. Instead, her choices are based on taste, smell, texture, hunger, experimentation, camaraderie, and enjoyment. She doesn't always make the choices that I would make if I were choosing for her, but every day I see her make healthy choices. In fact, I'm often surprised at how healthy her choices are, because I'm used to seeing kids who are "jonesing for their next fix" and will binge on things or sneak foods out of desperation, and she doesn't need to do that.

Two days ago, E asked for a cookie which she never ate because she decided to have the cucumber I gave her instead. The same day L literally spit out a cookie on the floor when I offered her an orange. Two weeks ago E's special requests at the grocery store were blueberries and Fruit Loops. The blueberries lasted about an hour. I still have some fruit loops in the cupboard. This week she has had some cookies, ice cream, chips, spaghetti (with organic sauce and raw tomatoes), and oatmeal (with nothing but rice milk). She's had FAR more apples, bananas, grapes, berries, melon, cabbage, carrots, pears, oranges, cashews, raw bars, tomatoes, avocados, cucumber, plum, nectarine......

So, back to raw foods. I have been eating a diet much higher in raw foods for the last 6-8 weeks. I tried "going raw" before, and it never lasted long, but I would try to drag my family into it with me. I'd guilt trip my husband into committing to 2 weeks with me or committing to 80% or whatever. I'd be extra vigilant about what the kids were eating (well, really just E since L was not born yet or a little baby at that time). Keep in mind that "extra vigilant" means in *addition* to the food-nazi normal. I always fell off the band wagon, so on top of feeling guilty about my own failure, I felt guilty about letting my kids down.

Now that I see radical unschooling at work in relation to food, I can't imagine going back to controlling and restricting my daughter's diet. At the same time, I am eating a very high raw diet, and trying to provide the same for my family. So, how does that work?

1. I keep my diet ideals as *my* ideals. I quit projecting them onto other people as what they "should" be doing. I'm much gentler on myself too. I haven't made any commitments, I'm just eating what I know will help me feel good- physically, spiritually, mentally- in that moment. This is what helps *me* feel good, but I recognize that it is not the same for everyone. Some people feel great on a Traditional Foods diet or some other whole foods diet, and those people could end up being people in my family.

2. I put relationships before anything else. Eating food is too common of an event to be a stressful one. I would rather see my daughters eating a candy bar, laughing, enjoying themselves and enjoying my company, than eating cabbage leaves, crying, with our relationship stressed and strained, resentment filling the air. Now, I'm not posing those as the only two options! In fact, just yesterday my kids were happily munching away on cabbage leaves freshly picked with their own hands from a community garden. But IF *in that moment* I have a choice between letting my kids eat unhealthy food in peace and joy, or creating a memory full of anger and resentment, I will choose the the peace and joy.

3. Options, options, options! Not restricting food is not the same as an apathetic "eat whatever you want, I don't care." I trust that with a childhood full of options, experiences and information my children will have the ability to make healthy choices, unhindered by feelings of guilt, resentment, or other emotional baggage. I try to keep my kitchen full of quick, easy fruits or raw goodies to grab, and offer those along side other things my kids might choose. For example, today E asked for an ice cream which we have because D has an ice cream truck business. I gave her the ice cream, and spooned a little of it into a bowl for L. Then I put half an avocado in a bowl and cut up some oranges and set those on the table without a word. Both kids ditched the ice cream. L ate a few slices of orange and E ate the avocado and then both got down to play. I didn't even notice until about half an hour later when I saw the ice cream that they had barely touched, melting. I asked E if she was done with it, which she was, so I threw it away.

4. Alternatives. I am lucky to live right down the street from both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, so it makes this pretty easy. If E wants chips, cookies, ice cream, etc. I will usually get it at Trader Joe's. I am well aware that it's still not whole foods, but it is often organic and almost always free of preservatives, artificial colors, flavors, msg, hfcs, etc. Another option is homemade. E's favorite cookies are my homemade chocolate chip cookies which are vegan and made with whole wheat flour and honey instead of sugar. Last week, I learned how to make raw chocolate chip cookies, including raw chips and she liked those as well. Tonight I made raw banana cream pie and strawberry cream pie.

5. Accepting what IS. It's a fact of life that whether we're talking about food or anything else, things will not always be our ideal, go as planned or meet our preferences. I'm learning, though this is a hard one for me, to accept was IS rather than spend time worrying about the future, regretting the past, or resisting reality. It is a reality for me that my husband owns his own business driving an ice cream truck. Yep, I pay my bills with money from the sales of hfcs to innocent children. In some circles, I feel like I'd admitting to being married to a drug dealer! ;) It's also a reality that my paycheck is not enough to eat as much organic as I'd like. Also, my husband does not eat the same way I do, which means that food I would prefer my kids not to have, that they don't even ask to buy, ends up being one of their options in the house because he brings it in.

There was a time not too long ago, when all of this would have had me in a food-nazi frenzy every.single.day. Not anymore. It is not my *preference* for things to be this way, but the only thing that I *really* have control over is my own attitude, my own actions, and my own responses. I choose to model healthy eating to my kids. I choose to take the time to learn how to make alternatives that they will like. I choose to keep my kitchen clean so it's easy to prepare healthy foods. I choose to take the time to offer them healthy foods, and present those in an appealing way. I choose to support my husband's business, and our mutual desire to be financially independent some day. I choose to be kind to my husband no matter what he is eating, to try to find healthier alternatives that he enjoys, and to support his journey.

Ultimately, I have no control over the choices my kids will make when they are adults or even teenagers or pre-teens for that matter. As soon as they are old enough to have their own money, stay at friend's houses, go to the store by themselves, the WILL eat whatever they want. What I can do now, is be someone they trust to give them good advice, not just control them. I can let them make lots of little choices now, and give them lots of opportunities for experimenting with how different foods make their bodies feel now. When they are making those choices on their own, I want them to be basing their decisions on what makes their own bodies function the best and weighing that against science or finances or expectations at social gatherings or all the dozens of other factors that come into play when making choices. I don't want that decision making process to be muddied by resentment and "shoulds" and "this would make mom disappointed" and "I'm going to do it just because she said I can't." A temporarily perfectly healthy diet is not worth the potential emotional baggage.

So, that's how I'm living life as both a radical unschooling mom and a woman who's eating a high raw foods diet.