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Comments
-communicate my wants and needs to H better I don't know how this is going, I think I need to communicate with myself better :P
-touch H more oh, yes, I should do that more
-keep the house tidy and clean I've been doing pretty well with this (except the last 3 weeks or so...need to get back in the saddle with this). It really helps having it on the chore list and having hubby take part in some of the maintenance...it's so much easier to only deal with one day's mess rather than a weekend's worth.
-put more effort into maintaining relationship with my parents (learn and accept their limitations) Im doing heaps better with the accepting limitations part and it's improving the time I do get with them that I don't have the resentment and sadness hanging around
-spend more time with my sister
we're talking every week and seeing each other most weeks
Golly...it took me about half an hour to write that (interupting kids)...I'll have to finish later
-relax properly I did for a little while but falling into bad habits again: mainly too much screen time
-find things that make me happy/energise me and do them: I've been doing a bit more gardening and getting outside more now that the weather's nicer, been getting more playdates, I also might start playing soccer more ( I joined a social play around this weekend, haven't played in nearly 10 years)
-socialise more, cultivate friendships with people who are worth it I think this is going well. I 've done a few dinner things with girlfriends, but not any more cause baby's a bit old to come along but she and hubby aren't quite ready for me to leave her for a long time in the evening. We've had lots of playdates, especially with another family who live near us and she's also a stay at home Mom of same age kids. We've been inviting people over for barbeques more.
-celebrate and utilise flow states I'm doing pretty good with these
-stop finding my self worth in others' opinions (esp. my mother's) maybe
-sort the photos and movies from my camcorder and turn them into something I can distribute to grandparents etc. still on hold...I keep getting roadblocks like the computer breaking every time I make a little bit of progress
Parenting
-Get LO doing nap/quiet time by herself we're managing this almost every day
-Toilet train LO This one's probably my biggest achievement: she's only in diapers for naps and night time and very rarely has accidents...and it only took about 2 weeks. She takes herself off to the potty or loo whenever she needs to, no reminders. Next step is pulling up her own pants (she can do it, but mostly comes and asks me to...for now it's useful cause it lets me monitor when she goes) and more poos into the loo rather than the diaper (she saves them up for times when she's got one on)
-Keep creating learning experiences for LO I've set up some more formal learning stuff for her and done up her shelves properly (though I'm not so good at maintaining). I've been taking her to a one-day -a -week Montessori playgroup/school
-Keep reading a parenting book with H I guess we never got past that first chapter or so...
-Discuss discipline and eating issues with H I've not been so good at the discussing stuff but it's getting better anyway
-Wean LO off cartoons Well, she's rarely watching cartoons, but still too much screen time. I'm not doing much screen babysitting though
You asked about discussions about eating and discipline issues with hubby. Eating is to do with how messily they eat and what they eat and both related to MIL who doesn't like mess and who does want to feed them sugary stuff. I've made a clear statement to MIL about the baby and sugar and she's pretty much honoured that (H doesn't want me to cause further drama on this so my agreement with him was that I'd just make the statement but drop it if MIL wouldn't comply). H thinks I'm too extreme in my feed the kids healthy stance...and I do have a tendency to black and white thinking that I'm fighting: my default is that if LO has one cookie she may as well have all the cookies and the world is going to end because now she'll be unhealthy so I'm trying to lighten up a bit and turn a blind eye to some of the stuff she's getting. (At least I can be kind of black and white with a stance of under ones don't have sugar and under twos we limit it and after that age, we limit at home but when we're out it's a free for all). As for messy: I'm happy with the status quo now (kids feed themselves at their own ability level, whether that's hands or cutlery) and hubby's doing the same, so if he's still unhappy about it, he can bring it up. I try to position H as the one in charge of baby when we eat in front of MIL and she's not complained about the mess recently.
In all parenting things, I need to keep in mind that H is just as much their parent as I am and has a say in how it's done whether I like it or not (boy was it a rude shock to me when oldest left babyhood and H suddenly stopped just parenting like I told him to :P...I guess up till then he felt he had no idea what to do and was leaving it to the expert). His discipline of LO (3yo now) is harsher than mine, he's much quicker to jump to punishment than I am and less tolerant of her being a baby. At the time I initially brought up the issue on this forum we were going through a time when his interactions with her were overwhelmingly negative and he was having frequent angry outbursts at her and every situation escalated quickly. I couldn't think how to even discuss this with H because he does have a say in how his child is raised and I worried that me saying the wrong thing would make it worse. (I also freely admit that the discipline in his family of origin turned out better kids than that in my own family so maybe he is the expert on this issue.) I did sometimes interject but always as careful as I could be not to go against his authority in front of kids, I tried to support him and her with communication with each other and made some small suggestions to him about spending positive time with her and allowing tense situations to disipate rather than escalate. Anyway, when I wrote the thing on the forum I was thinking a more in depth discussion might be needed and wasn't sure how to do that, especially in light of him being the head of our household and having legitimate authority to enforce discipline. So, first I prayed about it for a week and it just mostly came right (God fixed it!...oh yeah, there's that part of my MAP saying I should pray more...). H of his own accord just decided to work really hard on not being angry with LO and that has eased things a lot.
So that's what I meant by I haven't been good about discussing things, but they've improved anyway.
Good for you to relax a bit on the eating front! I'm happy to hear that you found a strategy that works for you! Restricting sugar intake in your house and being casual about it when you're out is a good compromise. You'll see how freeing it is for YOU to loosen up, too, in the long run.
To be very honest, the part about discipline is outright worrying me.
Disciplining and punishing a 3 year old seems to be a main concern for you and your husband, but in fact with children that age it is a very minor part of parenting. Especially the punishing.
Redirection, distraction, modeling behaviour - all that is sufficient and legitimate in raising a kid that age. I am not saying you should let your child run wild!!! By all means, establish boundaries and consequences, but that is very different from punishing.
Punishments may have their place, but only when the child is old enough to truly understand what they have done and WHY it was wrong AND when there are no practicable consequences available. And the positive interactions need to outweigh the negative ones by 5:1 in order to sustain a healthy relationship.
Consequences are productive, punishment is always destructive by nature. Sure, it works in turning out adjusted people and in many cases it won't have negative effects on the child's personality, because humans are very resilient. But you don't want to rely on your child's resilience, do you?
"I couldn't think how to even discuss this with H because he does have a say in how his child is raised and I worried that me saying the wrong thing would make it worse."
You need to stop being afraid of your husband's anger. If he can't bear your disagreeing with him on parenting issues with a 3 YO, what do you think you'll do when your daughter hits puberty?
"Anyway, when I wrote the thing on the forum I was thinking a more in depth discussion might be needed and wasn't sure how to do that, especially in light of him being the head of our household and having legitimate authority to enforce discipline."
Head of household or not - anger outbursts at a toddler are unacceptable and damaging. Period.
"I did sometimes interject but always as careful as I could be not to go against his authority in front of kids"
You are unhappy and unsettled about your husband's parenting style. You are loyal and trying to see his point, which gives you credit. But please, take in careful consideration that you are taking his side here in an unequal battle. You children are defenseless, they need you to step in if their father gets angry with them or punishes them too harshly. It's not careful interjection that's asked for here, but firm statements.
I realize that this post is probably very hard for you to accept. Please, be sure that I wrote it after long and careful thought.
I am truly worried that the parenting dynamic in your family might turn into an unhealthy, abusive direction if you don't put your foot down now.
Your husband is not the bad guy. I am sure he does the best he can. He's also a product of his upbringing and uses the tools that are available to him. But I don't think these tools are good enough.
If you want us to be unapologetically feminine, be unapologetically masculine.
Thanks for the input everyone.
@Scarlet, mostly time outs, often stern talking or shouting, some smacks, some natural consequences (like being turned out of our bed in the morning if she's making a nuisance of herself there). Hubby punishes for infractions ranging from hurting her sister and drawing on walls to making too much noise, interrupting etc. He generally punishes harsher than I would (including punishing lots of things that I would just ignore) and to me it seems the punishments are harsher depending on his mood rather than the level of the infraction. (Prob something I'm prone to myself, I just don't see it). Also, this has improved recently.
@Maria, my parenting focus is more on her education and guiding her through milestones, rather than discipline, but that's probably just me avoiding the difficult task. I do redirection, distraction and modelling as much as I can; mostly the modelling. I find redirection and distraction has very little utility now as once she's determined on something she doesn't forget...though, now I think about it I would classify an interaction like 'I said no and if you ask again/try do it again, you will have timeout/a smack (on the hand), say "yes, Mommy"' 'yes Mommy' 'ok, now let's go do...' as discipline as I'm using punishment to back up my statement, but I guess it's also distraction... (without the statement about the punishment, many times she won't let herself be distracted and keeps saying 'but I said I want...' in her best annoying whiny voice working up to a tantrum)
You say: Punishments may have their place, but only when the child is old enough to truly understand what they have done and WHY it was wrong AND when there are no practicable consequences available.
I think she does have this level of understanding and my husband is certain she does.
As I said, the actual anger outbursts at her have stopped.
I am aware that my children are defenceless and needing to protect them and will keep working on this. Thank you for your concern. In my best 'as impartial as I can be ' assessment, we were skirting too close to the line (of abusive) and maybe over it a few months ago, but are now within acceptable bounds.
@kiche and @katt, while I read parenting books for relaxation, hubby will only read them under duress and doesn't easily accept what they say if it doesn't line up with what he already believes (and if he already believes it he doesn't see the point in reading about it). To hubby, it's a stressful activity and yet another thing to add to his growing to do list burden. Oddly, French children don't throw food is the one book I've known him to just pick up and read of his own accord, the take home message he got from that book is that all babies can and should sleep through the night at 4 months and ours better do that too (he read it when I was pregnant with no 2 who is now a 10 month old who most definitely does not sleep through the night, so let's not remind him of it). I tried to discuss the concept of the betize (sp?), the small misdemeanours that should be ignored but he's not convinced...
Hubby went out for a babycino with LO this morning. Officially, our evening routine is for him to spend time with kids when he gets home from work while I cook, it started as playing outside, but is now more like him sitting in the lounge with his ipad watching them with half an eye. The problem is that he comes home from work exhausted and stressed and doesn't know how to de-stress, so he comes home feeling like he just needs to relax and being around kids is just another stressor.
I would love to socialise with more families. However, H is pretty introverted and really needs his alone time so it's unfair to fill his social calendar too much (so most family socialising is play dates while he's at work). Also, our kid is better behaved and maturer than most of those we do interact with so it's just kinda proof that what we're doing is working...
Anyway, I actually signed on the update some projects. There are a few main projects I'm working on with kids:
- Get LO doing poos in the toilet/get her out of nap time diapers (she saves her poos up for nap time)
- Wean LO
- Get baby sleeping through the night
I've got to go now (I've used up all my kid free computer time) so I'll update later with what I'm doing with these. I guess after the comments above, and a discussion I coincidentally had with H last night I need to add:
-improve our toddler discipline
My plan is to pick one aspect of one these every week or so. I choose based on what's annoying me the most. Last week I dropped LO's evening nursing session down to a count of a hundred instead of being as long as we feel like it, H chose this as the thing that annoys him most (me nursing her for a long time in the evening).
-toilet training: I've nearly had enough of cleaning stinky toddler nappies and am ready to push her further in this direction. At present, she has done few toilet and potty poos to lots of positive reinforcement; I also talk to her about how much easier clean up is when it's not squished up in the diaper: she has translated this to the poo being happy swimming in the toilet :P Some nap times I give her the choice to not wear a diaper. My next step is probably going to be introducing a star chart for toilet/potty poos and then dropping the nap time diaper.
-Weaning: I'll just one step at a time reduce the bits I find most annoying. I've already been talking with her about oneday she'll be too big for Mommy milk, listing kids we know who are weaned and often postponing nursing sessions or limiting them to a count of 10.
-baby sleep: I have a copy of 'the no nocry sleep soltion and will create and implement a plan from there. step one is probably moving her to a mattress on the floor of our room as she's crawling to much to be safe in the co-sleeper cot weve been using.
-discipline: one of our biggest failings here is consistency, I kind of make it up as I go along. Time outs in particular are in random places and random lengths of time. So I'll start with setting up a permanent spot upstairs and downstairs and using an actual 3 minute timer (she's 3 yrs old)
I am sorry that you are still struggling with your hubby being so low-energy and disengaged. You seem fairly aware, but be careful about glossing over his actions and behaviors for the benefit of the forum. It is just a way of rationalizing the situation to yourself. I am particularly concerned about your comment about his discipline habits or actions are based more on his mood than the offense. This will lead to the development of very poor behaviors and interactions between your LO and your husband. I am sure you know this and/or have already witnessed it.
I hope you don't feel I am criticizing you. I just recognize in your descriptions, some of my own responses to my husband's behavior, that I tolerated for way, way too long. Nothing good will come from that.
Good luck with your goals and/or steps for this week!
Please post back and let us know how things are going for you and your little family.
I went looking for my dreams outside of myself and discovered, it's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it.
Anne Shirley - Anne of Avonlea
Just for fun...
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Re: @dalef's comment, any ideas on how to manage something like this? He doesn't have anywhere he wants to be. He is introverted and just wants to be home. We've tried variations of hubby has zen time in our house and they all fall apart eventually either because kids are noisy and really want his attention (or being difficult and he feels he needs to be involved in discipline). I've tried suggesting he walks slowly and enjoys his walk home after work. What's working right now (2 weeks so far) is for him to do exercise in our home gym first thing when he gets home. Kids watch him from the other side of the baby barrier and I get on with cooking. We are also instituting a once a week co operative with a friend of mine where she and I do the cooking and bathing and getting kids (hers and mine)fed and ready to bed and the men go out. So far, H is struggling to think of something to do with himself in this time.
Last week was supposed to be step one of getting baby sleeping (do a nap and night time log and write out a sleep plan) but instead we went on an impromptu holiday, so I'll do that this week, starting with logs today and tonight. Baby has been sleeping on the floor successfully for 2 weeks now. I spend about half the night sleeping down there with her and half the night with hubby.