Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Carter has gotten so sweet with his buddy Jake. When Jake doesn't come on a day he normally would Carter walks around the house saying, "Jakers?", hoping Jake will show up at any minute. When he's playing with cars he sweetly walks one over to Jake. It melts me. He'll carry Jake's sippy cup over to him saying, "Here ya go, Jakers." He waves to Jake when they are on opposite sides of the play house. He points next to him and asks for Jake to sit there. He tells Jake night night when he goes down for a nap and takes off running toward his room at the first sound of him waking. I love their relationship.

Beating the windows together.

Of course, Carter still has his moments where he takes a toy from Jake, but he's in that stage of development. It is to be expected. What drives me nuts is his mooching ways. He always finishes eating before Jake and then starts stealing food off Jake's tray. I put him in time out only to have him immediately back at Jake's tray sneaking food. I would knock it out of his hand telling him no so he wasn't rewarded with food for bad behavior. He wasn't swayed. I explained if he eats Jake's food, Jake won't have enough to eat and will be hungry. Blank stare. I'd get him distracted with something else only to have him lose interest after a while and go back to food stealing. Finally I told him , "If you take food off Jake's tray again I'm going to slap your hand." He reached his precious, little hand over and grabbed a piece of food. I slapped his hand, he dropped the food, looked at me in shock, and tears beaded up in his eyes. His smile turned into a frown and he started crying, reaching for me. It was terrible. I hugged Carter and told him I was sorry he took the food and not to do it again.

I will steal your food!

Once Carter was consoled I walked into the kitchen and began crying. It's one thing to disappoint Carter by not giving him something he wants and causing him to cry. It's a totally different thing to cause him physical pain. I stood there thinking a mile a minute with tears streaming down my face. I'm trying to teach Carter not to hit. I want him to learn that you solve problems through communicating, not by using force. And here I am doing just the opposite. He learns by example and I'm teaching him to solve his problems by hitting. 

Carter noticed me crying and rushed over saying, "Mommy okay?" I looked at my sweet child who learned to check on the well being of others through my modeling. I knelt down on the floor and told him I was okay, I just needed a hug. He quickly rushed over with his arms outstretched for a hug. When he let go he looked at me, said "Okay?", and shrugged his shoulders. I assured him I was okay as he rushed back to Jake's tray to snatch food. I followed him over, told him no and pried the food out of his hand. I decided it may take longer for him to learn this way, but it will be better for both of us. I can be a hard ass with discipline, just ask my old co-teacher. My method doesn't involve severe or physical (obviously in a school setting) punishments. I hold children accountable for their behavior and have high expectations. The consequence for the behavior is logical and related if at all possible. My favorite punishment is making children feel very guilty by discussing what they chose to do and explaining how disappointed I am with lots of "looks" and sad voices thrown in.  Carter isn't to the age where he can comprehend that quite yet, so I tried something else out. And I'm ashamed to even admit that I wouldn't have done it if I weren't pregnant.  I was overly frustrated due to my lack of patience that comes right before naptime when I'm physically exhausted.  I learned I'm not going to be the type of parent who can spank (although I have no problems with spanking, do what works!). Unfortunately that's a lesson I had to learn from experience. My first year of teaching I discovered children forgive me much quicker than I forgive myself. Obviously that was the case with Carter. He was already over it and in my arms moments later and here I am writing this weeks later still beating myself up over slapping his hand. You live and you learn.  Sometimes you just choose to do it the hard way!

Update:

I wrote this post about 2 months ago and have had so many posts I felt were more important to get up since then that it's been sitting in my drafts waiting and waiting to be published.  I figured I would add an update on the food stealing situation as it has improved dramatically.  After the awful hand slapping incident I went back to telling Carter "no" very sternly and knocking the food out of his hand so he wasn't reinforced for bad behavior by getting to eat the food.  After just a few days Carter figured it out.  Now if he takes food off Jake's tray and I tell him "no", he drops the food back onto his tray and walks away!  I'm so glad my less stern method of discipline was successful and I'm also glad that Carter is such a fast learner! 

Slapping Update

I've mentioned the strange phenomenon of Carter slapping other children here, here, and here.  The first time it happened I was in shock.  We were on our first meetup and Carter was overtired so I took care of it and wrote it off as him being way too tired.  Then we traveled to Virginia and visited lots of babies during our trip and it happened again.  At first we all just stopped and stared in shock.  We couldn't believe he had done it and didn't react quickly enough.  It was the strangest thing and we had no idea where it came from or why it suddenly started.  When Carter was in daycare there were a couple of kids who would slap others to get what they wanted and one of them even bit Carter a few times.  But with all that going on, Carter never picked it up at the time.  Now all the sudden months later he is dishing out slaps and of all places to little kids' heads.  I was at a loss, embarrassed, and stressed.  I want Carter to have friends, I want people to like him, I want to set up playdates, but here he is abusing his friends.  The motivation behind his slaps are also confusing.  He doesn't do it when he's upset or wants a toy.  It comes from nowhere.  He'll be playing and suddenly just reach over and slap the child.

When we got home from our trip I decided it was time to get serious about getting his habit under control.  Anytime he slapped anyone, including the dogs, he went straight to time out.  I set a timer for one minute, since Carter's one year old, and when it goes off he's allowed to get up.  At first he didn't seem to understand the concept and just sat or laid in the corner crying.  As time went on it seemed as though he understood a bit better.  He would sit in the corner, looking up at me, attempting to make me smile or laugh (sound like Uncie Tommy at all?).  I would stand staring at the ground not giving him an ounce of attention.

This morning we had a playdate with a little boy Carter had never met before.  I felt like I needed to tell the mom, see this perfect little child of mine?  He's very sweet and loves other kids.  He will hold your boy's hand, give him hugs and kisses, hand him a toy he's reaching for, and even blow him kisses as we leave.  He may also unprovoked reach over and slap your child on the top of the head and I don't know why.  I am so sorry and I swear we are really trying to get it to stop!  I did explain to her that he'd recently started slapping kids in the head and we are working to remediate the situation.  She was very sweet about it and said her son is very resilient.  Carter and the little boy were playing so sweetly and standing together.  Pretty soon it happened, Carter reached over and slapped the boy in the head.  I picked him up and hauled him off to the corner for time out.  We went back in and he immediately went back over and laid one on the boy again, who amazingly was not phased either time.  I took Carter over to time out right away.  It seemed as though he was testing me.  Okay, you took me to time out last time I hit him, but will you do it again?  After that we didn't have another instance the entire time.  The time out seems to be working just not eradicating the behavior as quickly as I'd like.  If anyone has experience with such behavior and has suggestions, we are open to trying anything that will work.  Anything other than keeping Carter away from other children.  That's just not an option.

Playing sweetly after a couple of time outs.

After we played at their house for a while we headed to story time at a library close to their house.  The story time was a lot more fun than the one we normally go to.  The librarian only read a few books and none were full length books, they were all board books.  She did lots of songs with the kids and even pulled out a bubble machine.  Carter loved it and spent a lot of the time dancing.  He even walked up right in front of the librarian and stood staring at the book which was fine until a little girl walked up and stood beside him.  No one could see the book and I had to grab Carter.  As we were leaving we made plans to play and then go to story time again the following week.  Hopefully Carter will do better next time and will only slap once or if I'm lucky, not at all!  By that time he'll have a couple days of practice with Jake under his belt.  I'm hoping that will help because it will just be me and the two of them and I'll be able to put him straight into time out with no distractions.  Tomorrow is Jake's first day.  Wish us luck!

Carter had a blast chasing bubbles at story time!