Thursday, February 14, 2008

Somebody help me

My previously sweet, adorable toddler is going through some hellacious Terrible 3s at the moment. Yesterday at school she got annoyed at another kid and poked him in the eye with a felt tip marker. Fortunately the little boy wasn't injured, but holy crap, this is coming out of nowhere. She never used to be like this! Now she keeps getting sent to the office for causing trouble.

She's not even three and a half yet! And Mr. Fraulein and I, having no previous experience with this kind of thing, can't figure out if we're dealing with it the right way. Our main approach so far has been the Counting to Three tactic ("I'm going to count to three, and if you don't stop jumping on the couch, we start taking away toys...") combined with revoking of TV privileges and "special treats" (chocolate, etc.) We'll see how it goes...

3 comments:

Magpie said...

The big one went through the same thing at about that age (which coincided with the birth of her little sister, so, not too surprising). We had the same taking away toys approach, and by the end she was down to a cardboard box and a straw, I think. The naughty steps also seemed to help -- you sit there for however long the time out is, and if you get up the clock goes back to zero. Took some time to get it through her head that I meant it, but eventually got there.

I think a lot of was just testing limits - what can I get away with? I'm fine with being the mean Mommy, so she eventually learned that well, you can't get away with jack around me, so cut it out now.

Of course, now I'm going through all of this with the little one, so apparently, I just have really "assertive" kids. Or as the pre-school teacher put it "well, she really knows her own mind." Given that I'm pretty much a pain in the ass, it's not surprising, and it certainly does make my mother cackle with glee whenever she hears them screaming like banshees while we're on the phone.

Misty said...

Oh my goodness! That will make for one heck of a "how I became blind" story! :(

Fraulein said...

The one thing that makes me feel better is it seems like everyone we know with a 3-year-old is going through pretty much the same thing. I find it amazing how strong-willed she can be. She just REALLY wants to get her own way, which I guess is testing her limits. She wants to see how far she can go to get her own way.