I don't know whether to write about Mama's Day, my boundary-less daughter or our crazy last few weeks, but since Mother's Day was a rather rough one this year, I think I need to take a few more days to gather my thoughts and find a way to make them positive. :) So...I suppose I will write about something that has been consuming my thoughts...discipline.
The little miss just went through a growth spurt, physically and mentally. We have a neighbor girl who is 3 weeks younger than Carly and has been towering over her in height the last 6 months but this week they were the same height! Her mama commented right when they came over, "Wow, Carly's grown a lot!" I should have snapped a picture of them, since the girls LOVE to play together, but I didn't. We try to get together with Jenny (mom) & Jenna each week, but it usually ends up being a bi-weekly thing.
At any rate, Carly's mental growth spurt has been her figuring out how to really push our boundaries. I think she is toying with right and wrong, although on a very small scale. She knows what she can & can't do around the house, and before she does something that she's not suppose to do, she will make sure we are watching and then go for it with a big grin on her face. I suppose she's been doing that for a while, but it's intensified this week. She also is becoming increasingly more upset when we say "no," take something away or prevent her from walking/touching/climbing whatever she is after. Some days I feel like all I'm doing is re-directing her to something else, but it's much harder to do these days. She sees right through me and is beside herself when I don't let her do what she wants. It's so often for her safety...like a majority of the time, but she is still so upset. I've done some examining of this part of parenthood and discovered that learning to discipline and teach effectively is much like learning how to care for an infant. When Carly was born I was so confused about how to best care for her needs. Should I listen to what the books are saying, all the advice being thrown at me, or my motherly instinct? Once I learned that it was a balance of all three with favoritism toward my motherly zen, I became a pretty confident mama. Fortunately, I'm not going to beat myself up over my parenting during this phase. Brian & I will have to use a bit of trial & error and ask Carly and one another for grace as we figure it out. All three of us are going through a growth spurt together! ;)
The toughest part about parenting, to me, is parenting in public. Doesn't it stink?! This topic is one of the reasons why Mother's Day was the worst one I've ever been a part of, but again, more on that later. I will say, though, when you have a strong-willed, overly-curious, independent 14-month old who does not understand that there are social expectations in the world, it makes taking her anywhere very stressful. For example, today we were at the grocery store and what are the things she wants to do? Not sit in the cart, run around the store pulling items off the shelves, seeing a grapefruit and thinking it's a ball that she is more than welcome to play with, pushing the cart, following strangers, sitting on the conveyer belt and opening the bags of food I'm placing in the cart. There is nothing positive that could have possibly come out of the trip. I was essentially setting us all up for failure. But, our household needed a restock on items (I can usually go 10 days without going to the store and buy in bulk each time [with a few quick trips to Target in between for fresh fruit & milk), but that's still 3 times/month we have to do this activity). So what's a mom a to do? My future-predicting mother (I say that because she is accurate like 90% of the time when she predicts how I will feel or what I will go through in the future) commented about a month ago that I might find I stay home more with C between the ages of 12-18 months, due to the toddler's lack of understanding about the expectations of the world around her and not yet being at a place to discipline in public...and she was right. Although I'm not staying home any more than before (Carly and I both just love getting out in the afternoons), she was correct that taking her places is often times no fun for either of us.
Is this a phase that will pass rather quickly, just like all the others have, or will this be a battle for the next several months? What were your strategies when taking your toddlers out and what were your methods of discipline? Now when I use the word, discipline, I'm not talking about "getting her into trouble" but am referring to teaching her the social expectations of the world around her. I often think of the Von Trapp Family in the Sound of Music, and how those children were so well behaved, or disciplined. Of course I will not be running any sort of home that way, but I do want Carly to get to a place where she does behave in public, and to a place where she can respond positively to me saying "no" and explaining my reasoning behind that word. The poor girl really just wants to explore her surroundings, and touching each and every thing around her, as well as interacting with the people she sees is all part of learning. I don't want to discourage her from being curious, but unfortunately it's not okay to pull everything off a shelf in a store, push a stranger's cart, pick the neighbor's flowers, pet a stranger's dog, eat the chemically treated grass, swim in the mall fountain, or run in the street, just to name a few. It's also not okay to throw a tantrum when re-directed to something else.
I love being Carly's mama, and parenting is a fun and exciting challenge that takes a long time to become great at. My solution for now is to put her in as few of those positions as possible, fully acknowledging that she does someday have to be able to behave. Fortunately for us, we often spend time at Disney, where anything goes for little ones! She can do anything she wants at Typhoon Lagoon, so we will just keep spending our days there! :)
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