The No-Cry Discipline Solution: The New Model For My Future Dog Training Book

Tags

babies, behavior, book reviews, books, child development, children, discipline, Elizabeth Pantley, literature, No-Cry Discipline Solution, parenting, reviews, strategies

As you may remember, Elizabeth Pantley of the No-Cry Sleep Solution sent me some more of her books for me to check out. Since I love books, this made me pee my pants with excitement just a little bit. (Although that’s also a side effect of having given birth. Still working on those Kegels.)

So I started with The No-Cry Discipline Solution.

I really enjoyed this book, and I actually found it more useful than Harvey Karp’s The Happiest Toddler On The Block.

I Keep Thinking He’s A Dog, But Owl Thinks He’s People

Tags

babies, child development, children, concepts, dog, experiments, generalization, learning, psychology, reading, symbols, toddler, words

Most of my experience with teaching and training beings whose brains are smaller than mine has been with animals. Furthermore, in most scenarios Owl acts and responds very much like a dog and so I treat him very similarly most of the time.

I use redirection, positive reinforcement, a high-pitched, encouraging tone when I deal with him, and it seems to work. He responds well to praise, touch, and food rewards. He likes to fetch.

He’s a puppy!

So I am amused and delighted when Owl displays human-like abilities that are beyond the grasp of the dogs I have worked with.

Like when he was 14 months old and I realized that he understood that he was looking at himself in the mirror.

Hi, me!

I pointed to his reflection and said “who’s that?” and he pointed to himself! To test his understanding, I secretly placed a banana sticker in his hair and showed him his reflection. Sure enough, his hand crept up to his hair while a perplexed look appeared on his face.

Dogs would NOT get that.

Also, I am constantly surprised by not only the extent to which he imitates us, but the extent to which he understands what he is imitating. Like at Hallowe’en, when he had just learned to walk, and he spotted a candy wrapper on the ground. He picked it up and toddled over to the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and proceeded to try and open it to throw away the wrapper.

A dog can learn to put something in the garbage if you teach him, but it would never occur to him to see something like a wrapper, identify it as garbage, and then try to throw it away himself. Hypothetically you could teach a dog to recognize certain things are garbage to be thrown away, but it would be a lot of work.

Your average dog does not watch you do something, intuit the intent behind your action, and then try to do it himself.

Owl does this every day.

I'll just slip these on...

Then there are other things that I almost don’t notice until I think about them.

For example, every morning I ask him to choose his footwear for the day. He can pick his wading boots, or his little doc-martin style boots. No matter which he chooses, he always brings me a matching pair. He has never brought me, say, one wader and one doc martin.

It’s the same thing when he brings me my own footwear (yes, I get my baby to fetch my shoes. I told you he is very like a dog…). He never brings me one sneaker and one boot. He brings me two sneakers, or two boots.

Again, a dog would have difficulty with that. He can fetch your shoes, but you’d have to formally train him to understand “fetch my sneakers” vs “fetch my boots”. It would take WORK.

But Owl does it as a matter of course. Humans are clever.

And the way he generalizes! I made the mistake of teaching my dog to chase my ex-boyfriend’s cat under the command “get the cat”. When I got my own cat, that command didn’t work, because he didn’t understand that “cat” meant any cat other than ex-boyfriend’s cat. We had to teach him our new cat’s name, instead.

But the baby understands categories easily. When he was 12 months old I could say “where’s Beloved Dog?” and he would point to Beloved Dog, meanwhile identifying him as “dog”. Ditto for the cat. He knew that we had A DOG and A CAT but that they each have their own unique identifiers as well.

We taught him what a hippo was, and from then on he could identify all sorts of hippos in all sorts of books, even drawn by different artists. No dog could do that!

"hippo" is one of his favourite signs

Then again, Owl’s capacity for self-control, maturity, patience, obedience, following basic instructions, and potty training are completely eclipsed by our dog, and certainly his capacity for destruction rivals any dog I have ever met.

So I am putting him to the ultimate test.

I am going to try to teach both dog and Owl to read.

Well, not READ.

At least, not as those who use the alphabet would consider to be reading (Owl is trying to teach himself the alphabet, but has difficulty after “D”…).

More… symbol recognition, like in Mandarin. I’m trying to teach Owl to recognize certain letter combinations as holding meaning.

I made Owl flash cards

some of his favourite things

I’m going to do the same with Beloved Dog. I borrowed flash cards from my friend and business partner who swear up and down that she has seen dogs learn to recognize words like “sit” and “down” and differentiate between them.

Just to be clear:

I am NOT pushing, pressuring, or otherwise making this un-fun for Owl. It’s just a game, something I am interested in to test his capacity for generalization and symbolic representation. I don’t believe that it will aid his development or help him school in the future.

I’m just pitting him against the dog.

For science.

(I’m so going to get trolled…)

Which one looks smarter to you?

18 Months Later…

Tags

18 months, babies, child development, milestones, parenting, toddlers

Owl is a year and a half old, as of a couple of days ago. Wow.

I ran into a volunteer from my old work that day – she spotted me at my new work, while buying pet medication. There was a lot of hugging and catching up to accomplish… and we realized that we hadn’t seen each other since I was 5 months pregnant… and now I have a one and a half year old.

1 hour old

I remember when he couldn’t even hold up his own head. Now he hands us heavy packages from our grocery bags at the end of a shopping run.

Where d'you want this 3 lb steak?

We have officially lost count of how many words he says either with speech or sign, usually both. He not only knows where his nose is, but also his feet, toes, eyes, eyelashes, elbows, knees, bum, back, shoulders and pretty much every other external body part (although he is still learning “thumb” and “scrotum”, both of which he confuses with “tongue”).

He also enjoys making animal noises, which he picked up on his own from books we read him. I always wondered why parents spend time teaching their kids animal  onomatapoeia. Well, it turns out, it’s because toddlers think it’s HILARIOUS.

He can do everything listed in the 18 month section of What To Expect The Toddler Years (although our copy is a Value Village edition from 1996, so for all I know, nowadays kids Owl’s age are expected to have discovered cold fusion by 18 months), including the “may even be able to” section (which includes “identify 1 picture by naming” – are they kidding?).

When Owl was born he would stay up for 8 hours straight, screaming and fussing and clawing at the world.

WHY AM I ALIVE??

Now he still stays awake for 8 hours straight, and he does his share of fussing still, but mostly he spends it climbing on things, taking things apart, and saying “Mama? Dada? Hiiiii! Byeeeee! Der ba da. Da! Mama? Mama? Malk? Mo? MO? MALK!!!!”

THIS PLACE IS AMAZING!

A friend of mine just had a baby and PH and I are baffled by this child. He SLEEPS. Like, most of the time. Like, they have trouble getting him to stay awake long enough to nurse. He sleeps with people in the room. He sleeps when being carried around. He barely wakes up for a cold wet wipe on his bum.

We can’t help but wonder what a baby like that would have been like. A baby who didn’t wake up if someone sneezed half way down the street. A baby who could be taken to restaurants and just slept through the meal. A baby who didn’t seem to wildly resent all moments spent off of the breast, and half of the moments spent on the breast.

A baby who wasn’t born fighting everything.

But then, we wonder if such a baby wouldn’t have grown up to be very different from the toddler we have now:

Pass the BC Rolls, please.

A toddler whom we can take to any restaurant because he happily eats and looks around and flirts with the waitresses for as long as the meal takes.

A toddler who never even looks back when I drop him at daycare every day.

A toddler who never cries when strangers talk to him or pick him up.

A toddler who makes other parents at daycare say “I hope our next one is more like Owl”.

A toddler who finds the shyest, more introverted toddler in the room at the community jungle gym and tries to get her to look at him.

A toddler who does stuff like this:

and this:

and this:

Owl, you still don’t sleep well. Your father and I are very, VERY tired.

But dear lord, how we love you and your ridiculous, overconfidant, extroverted ways.

We have no idea how we made a right handed extrovert, and there are days when you wear us down to our last nerve.

But you are so. much. fun. You make us laugh every single day.

It makes me sad that you will grow up and leave us, someday. But PH is looking forward to your being a teenager who refuses to leave his bed.

Because your tiny little 23 pound body WEARS US OUT.

We’re so tired.

DADA

Tags

babies, child development, parenthood

Owl is all about the Dada these days.

I wish I could say that this resulted in him being less interested in my boobas, but that is not the case. I am still Milk Bags and expected to lactate at his beck and call.

But Dada is FUN BAGS.

A friend of mine is a social worker and one time I picked up one of her text books. It was all about families and stuff, and one chapter talked about the relationship between children and their father. It claimed that studies show that fathers tend to play in a more “creative” fashion with their kids. While mothers tend to stick to more “traditional” or mainstream games and songs when interacting with their kids, fathers tend to be more unpredictable, more physical, and invent crazy games.

This is certainly true of PH’s interactions with Owl. When Owl was 8 months old or so, he invented a new game. It was called “It’s On Owl’s Head”.

The game involved putting unusual objects on Owl’s head, and then announcing, “it’s on Owl’s head!”

A simple game, perhaps, but Owl thought it was the most brilliant game of all time.

The repertoire of games is larger now, consisting of such gems as “Shoulder Baby”, which involves Owl hanging on PH’s shoulder in a fireman carry. “Drunken Baby”, which consists of PH spinning Owl around in circles, carefully setting him down, and then giggling as Owl tries to walk in a straight line, and so on.

Last night Owl worked himself into hysterics by pretending to fall asleep on his Dada’s chest, and then popping his head up suddenly with a big grin. Dada pretended to be surprised each time. This was, apparently, THE FUNNIEST THING EVER.

Mama’s pretty fun too – we have Tickle Hand and the Kissing Game – but she just isn’t quite the same caliber as Dada when it comes to sheer AWESOME.

Nothing brings a smile to Owl’s face a quickly as asking him to point out Dada. He loves to spot Dada in pictures – the photo of us kissing on our computer desktop, the family photo on the fridge – Mama is old news but hey, look, THAT’S DADA!

Sometimes, he wakes up in bed with us at 5 am, spots Dada, and gets so excited that it takes a while to get him back to sleep. 

This morning, PH had already left for work when Owl and I got up, and it took me a good ten minutes to convince a hopeful babby that Dada was not around.

“Dada?”

“He’s at work, honey.”

“Dada?”

“He’s at work, sweetie.”

*thoughtful pause*

“DADA??”

Even the sight of the Xbox controller (disturbingly) is enough to trigger a suffusion of Dada enthusiasm. 

“Dada?”

“What are you pointing at, sweetie?”

“Dada!”

“There’s no picture of Dada there, Owl. Are you trying to say DOG? There’s a picture of a DOG over there.”

*jabbing the controller with a finger*

“DADA!”

“That’s not Dada, that’s an xbox controller.”

“Dada?”

“XBOX CONTROLLER”

*pause, then emphatic baby-sign for “father”*

“DADA?!!”

Oooookay, then.

But Mama is crafty and has learned to use this Dada fandom for her own nefarious purposes.

This evening, as time drew nigh to pick PH up from his daily commute at the train station, I knew that suggesting we “go get Dada” would be the best way to get Owl’s attention and cooperation.

Even so, the sight of the coat had him folding his arms over his chest and running away as fast as his little legs could take him.

Normally I chase him down and stuff his arms in, but this time I just stood there, holding out the coat.

“Don’t you want to go get Dada?” I asked.

“Dada!” Owl gave me a big grin.

“Well, if you want to get Dada, we have to get Owl’s coat on,” I said reasonably.

We stared at each other for a moment, while Owl thought about this. I raised my eyebrows and let him weigh the choices.

His mouth creased into an impish smile as he measured me up.

Then,

“DADA!!” and he ran towards me and stuck his arm into his coat.

Willing to put his coat on voluntarily in order to see his father?

That’s proof of true love.

Now He Can Attend Brock.

Tags

babies, baby sign, child development, English, language, parenting, sign language, speech

Language is important to me.

Aside: Before I posted this, I skimmed it and discovered that I had written:

“Lanugage is important to me”. I’m pretty sure there’s some irony in there.

In case it isn’t obvious that I, THE BLOGGER, love language, let me assure you that

I REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE LANGUAGE.

It amazes and astounds and amuses me daily. I’ll listen to a random stranger say something to another stranger and totally geek out on how intelligent they are, conveying thoughts with words, and then translating the words of others into thoughts.

Then there are days when “your dog got mites at the pet shop, you should take this vet bill to them” seems too complicated a sentence for people, and I despair for humanity.

But mostly, language delights me.

So I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting for Owl to get into language. Long before I got pregnant I was watching videos on teaching babies to read, and I totally wanted to teach my baby to read.

Not because I’m a pushy mom, who thinks it’ll help her kids get into a better college. I doubt it’ll give any real head start.

Just because IT’D BE REALLY COOL.

My friend who I’m starting a dog training biz with actually worked under this lady, so she’s going to show me how to teach Beloved Dog to read. I figure we can do Owl at the same time because he is FINALLY ready for language.

It took long enough. 

He started pointing at 8 months, and so I started sign language then, but the only word he picked up was “milk”, and that was a behaviour that I captured with positive reinforcement, not something he picked up through imitation and a desire to communicate.

He did pick up the sign for “ball” shortly before his first birthday, but that was it. Not even a “mama” until after 13 months.

It wasn’t until daycare that he picked up another sign – “more” – (and sadly, it’s the wrong version – the sign for “again” instead of the real sign for “more”, but whatever) and even then, language didn’t start.

My mother assurred me a month or two ago that as soon as Owl began to walk, the talking would start.

BOY was she right.

“Mama” appeared less than a week after he started walking, and now he is learning a sign every couple of days and really TRYING (and failing) to approximate the word sounds.

His sign vocabulary includes: “milk”, “ball”, “more/again”, “dog”, “cat”, “duck”, “frog”, “book”, and “bear” (sort of).

His spoken vocabulary consists of: “mama?” “dada?” “baaaaaa”, “daw?”, “daa”, and “duh”.

Only truly doting parents would understand most of these, but then, we’ve always been eager to interpret his sounds.

Language has begun and I’m SO STOKED. 

Now, if he could just walk AND talk...

I Want My Baby Back, Baby Back, Baby Back…

Tags

child care, child development, daycare, going back to work, television, working mother

I’m sure you’re all dying to know how Babby’s first day at daycare went.

Because clearly, your lives all revolve around MY life.

Oh, the ego-centric bloggerverse.

Anyway, he was fine. That massive all-night sleep ended at 4:45 am, so he was already exhausted and drowsy when I dropped him at daycare. Daycare Lady had no problem putting him to sleep thanks to that.

Well, thanks to that… and the sleepy suit.

She told me that he gobbled an egg (he had already had bacon and eggs and toast at home that morning), and pita, and LAMB SHANK, and rice, and crackers…

“He’s a really good eater!”

So I hear.

“He likes to feed himself.”

Yes, yes he does. I didn’t use the word “Baby Led Weaning” in case she thought I was a nut job, but I did tell her that he had never had purees – that I had always just handed him stuff off of my plate, and he’d eat it. Which is true. (Never mind that for the first month or so, he would just suck on it, rather than eat it, so he didn’t really start solids until seven months old…)

Anyway, he played and she said he didn’t cry at all. When I cam in the door he signed “milk” at me (Daycare Lady also thinks it means “Mommy” because she said there were times when he made it during the day and had no interest in the milk she brought). He wasn’t overjoyed to see me, just “oh, hey, about time you showed up. Boob me, woman.”

After he’d nursed for a bit, he went back to crawling around while I talked to her, wrote checks and so on.

All of that was good. But I didn’t experience much relief because I was drowning in the horror of what I had seen when I had arrived to pick him up…

I arrived about fifteen minutes earlier than I had told her to expect me. I looked in the window and saw him playing near the door while snacking on some pita.

AND DORA THE EXPLORER WAS PLAYING ON THE TELEVISION SET.

*dramatic mus8c* Dum Dum DUM!

Most of you know, I think, that I’m a little weird about television. I hate it with a passion. HATE. IT.

I mean, yes, I do watch T.V. But never on my own, as a solitary activity. Wouldn’t occur to me (well, except for those first couple of months when Babby had me pinned to a chair all frigging day). We don’t consider cable worth paying money for.

I like certain TV shows – House M.D., Glee, Sex and the City, Friends, Dragon’s Den, Mythbusters, Canada’s Worst Driver… but I hate commercials. I like to watch things on DVD whenever possible.

And pediatricians agree that television is totally mind-rotting for under-twos. Especially children’s television! I would rather Babby watch the news than children’s programming.

I specifically chose this daycare because the lady said the kids didn’t watch tv. SO WHY WAS DORA THE EXPLORER CHATTERING INANELY AT MY CHILD?

To be fair, he wasn’t watching, or plunked in front of the set. But it was ON. He could be hypnotized by it at any moment.

I brought it up almost immediately, and the Daycare Lady said that it was unusual. She said that she hadn’t even had cable in the room until she went on vacation, when her stand-in who took over daycare insisted on it for her own children. I didn’t care about before. I cared about NOW. Would it be a regular thing? I was assurred not.

But how can I know? My trust in her feels shattered.

I realize that this sounds melodramatic, but this is important to me. I tried to make that clear to her.

It brought home to me that 5 days a week, now, I am not raising my child. Someone else is. I have no real control over how he is treated and what he is taught. I can make my preferences clear, but I can’t KNOW.

What if he is turned into a tv fiend? What if his first word is “Dora!” or worse *shudder* “Max” or “Ruby”?

I realize that all children get exposed to the culture of tv eventually, and I thought I was resigned. I said as much to The Corn Fed Girl on her post about Those Moms (since I am one).

But he’s 11 months old.

It feels so early to let go, to give up my influence to others, to let someone else decide what my baby with his tender developing brain is exposed to.

I cried myself to sleep. 

Bobble-Head Babby Is Nearly One and I Am FLIPPING OUT

Tags

11 months, babies, birthdays, child development

I have an update on the sleeping situation, as well as the next Twilight post, coming down the pipe, but today Babby is 11 months old, so I want to talk about that.

Ahem.

ELEVEN MONTHS? WHAT THE HELL?

WHERE DID THE TIME GO??

WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO FOR HIS BIRTHDAY???

HOW CAN HE EVEN HAVE A BIRTHDAY; HE’S JUST A NEWBORN BAAAAAAAAAAAAAABY!

Good news: The sign for milk has reappeared with avengeance. Babies are strange.

He had a well-baby this past month and we discovered that he is 18 lbs, and still in the 15th percentile for weight. That’s good, it means he’s holding his own. Maybe not making any insane strides in the weight department, but growing at a normal pace.

His length is dirt-average, coming in at 50th percentile.

His massive melon head is in the 85th percentile.

That’s right: 15th, 50th, and 85th.

So basically, he has a skinny little body under a massive head. Like a lollipop. Or a bobble-head toy.

It means that one friend’s 3 month old is only 3 pounds away from surpassing my nearly-one year old, and another friend’s son has left Babby in his dust, by hitting 19 pounds at the 6 month mark.

But don’t we all wish our babies could stay small for longer? So I don’t mind.

I like him just the way he is.

But holy crap, I need to do something for his birthday, and I have no clue what to do.

If he were older, I would throw a kid-centric party at a local indoor play place, or perhaps a miniature train ride place or similar. But Babby isn’t really old enough to enjoy play grounds, and most of my B.C. friends don’t have kids, so it would mostly be a bunch of adults standing around in a place that had far too many clowns on the wall for any normal human to feel comfortable.

So then I think about throwing a more adult-centric party, because after all, isn’t this more a celebration of PH and I surviving the first year than an actual party for Babby? HE doesn’t know that he’s going to be a year old.

But some of my friends do have small children, and it seems weird to throw a first birthday that is absolutely no fun for kids.

Then there’s the matter of sheer volume of guests.

I’m the sort of person who likes to have one cohesive group of friends whom I see regularly. However, between my friends from my old work, PH’s friends from his old job, a fight between those friends from PH’s old job (resulting in half of them not speaking to the other half, and us caught in the middle), and a couple of old friends from our university days who now live out this way, we have multiple groups of friends, some of whom don’t know each other, and others who (even more awkwardly) aren’t speaking to each other. All of these friends fawn over Babby and would expect to be invited to his birthday. 

Oh, and neighbours who invited us to THEIR son’s first birthday, and are expecting us to return the favour.

Luckily, Babby never seems to get overwhelmed or overstimulated by large numbers of people. He thrives on it (how did we end up with an extrovert? HOW?). So despite the baby-book warnings of keeping parties small, Babby really wouldn’t mind a massive party.

Problem: Our living room is tiny. We had seven friends over last night and you couldn’t walk through the room comfortably once everyone was sitting down. Legs everywhere. A part with

Our complex does have a “party” room, which is really just a big empty room near the pool with a playground outside. We could reserve it for the day, open up the doors, and let everyone come to us. The kids could play in the pool or the playground, and the adults could stand around and talk.

But then that leads to awkward standing-around-and-making-conversation situations, which, as an introvert, I find exceedingly trying. I would probably spend the whole time stressing over whether everyone was having a reasonably good time, and trying to share myself around between three or four different groups of people, who would probably be standing around in odd bunches.

Or we could reserve a table at a local restaurant. Babby loves eating out, and is always well behaved. It would put a set time limit on the party (long enough to eat), and people would be able to just sit down and converse with their neighbours.

That would be good.

But that isn’t much fun for the few kiddies (average age about 4) who would probably attend, and then what about cake and presents? Would a restaurant let us bring in a separate birthday cake?

HELP, FOLKS.

HELP.

Oh, and as a separate issue, as he approaches one I am finding “Babby” to be a less and less appropriate nickname for him. I think I need to either out his real name, or adjust to a more personality-based (as opposed to age-based) handle for him. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

In Which Babby Decides To Be A Mountaineer When He Grows Up, and I Get Grey Hairs

Tags

babies, child development, safety, stairs

We installed the upstairs baby gate before Babby even figured out how to crawl, but we were slower about installing the downstairs gate.

A friend had given us a great pressure-mounted gate which fit my decor perfectly, back when I was still pregnant. However, it didn’t quite fit the width of our stair well.

My friend said that she had expander pieces for it in her basement somewhere, so we agreed that I would pick them up some time.

Fast forward a YEAR AND A HALF, and I still hadn’t gotten around to it. When he started crawling, though, I told her that I definitely needed to come get those pieces.

And we did! We really did! PH was going to dig out the gate and figure out how to put it together with the expandy bits that very weekend!

And do you know what happened in the meantime?

BABBY DISCOVERED THE STAIRS.

Now, some mothers worry about accidentally drowning their baby. Others fret about losing control of the stroller on a hill. Others have horrible visions of their baby falling from a great height.

I worry about him smashing his big old melon head.

…So I’m not a fan of Babby + stairs.

At first he would just get up on the first step and freeze. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t get down. Eventually he’d topple over backwards and I’d catch him. That wasn’t so bad.

"...Now what?"

After all, my friend the social worker says the bottom gate should be on the third step anyway “so they can learn how to get up and down, but can’t get high up enough to really hurt themselves.”

Okay, so that wasn’t so bad, and we’d put up the baby gate and everything would be fine.

Right?

Then, all of a sudden, Babby figured out how to go up.

"Hey, this just keeps going up! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?"

And boy, did he go up.

"Catch me if you can! No, really... you'd better get ready to catch me..."

And UP.

"I r so smrt"

AND UP.

Of course, removing him from the stairs just made them all the more enticing, and I realized that I had begun a sort of game – “How far up the stairs can I get before Boob-Lady catches me?”

"It goes up and Mommy wants me to stay away. HILARIOUS!"

No amount of distraction could keep him away, and I had no idea how to assemble the dang baby gate. He would clamber up the stairs giggling wildly, and I would come after him.

Of course, I could take him upstairs and just never let him down EVER AGAIN, but he gets bored up there after a while, and a bored Babby is an angry, angry Babby.

Besides, I knew that this was a skill he had to learn sone time. Babies need exposure to stairs in order to learn how to navigate them safely.

So I faced the inevitable. I decided that maybe I should just accept my fate… and change my plan of attack.

I decided not to remark on any upward progress (just stayed close behind him to catch him when he toppled over or slipped), but I made a big fuss over any attempt to get down.

I threw a huge party every time his foot moved DOWN a step instead of UP a step, and within half an hour he had the hang of it, and seemed to have forgotten how exciting UP could be.

Getting down: An even more exciting challenge

Instead he would go up a step or two, and come back down to recieve my wild admiration and excessive applause. He got pretty good at it, really. No more toppling over, no more slipping on the steps. He was the valdictorian of stairs, as far as he was concerned.

As far as I was concerned, I wished I had the dang gate up so I could stop having visions of him smashing his head in.

"Why yes, I AM amazing and clever. Thank you."

Anyway, he went up and down, up and down, and this kept him entertained for a while, and I much preferred it to the mad dashes up the stairs.

And then, after a pause to play with his ball, the devil must have spoken to him or something because otherwise WHY WOULD HE DECIDE TO TAKE HIS BALL UP THE STAIRS?

"Hey, what happens if I bring this toy up with me?"

"Wheee, look at it go! I could do this ALL DAY!"

Suffice to say, we PUT UP THE BABY GATE THAT NIGHT.

Babby isn’t impressed with it, but no obstacle really fazes him for long…

"Stand aside, ladies. This shouldn't take long."

No!

Tags

babies, child development, discipline, no, parenting

I have always been a little disturbed by the fact that understanding the word “no” is listed as a milestone in What To Expect The First Year. Especially since they then qualify it with “but not always obey it”.

First of all, the dog trainer in me says:

If he doesn’t obey the word “no”, then he doesn’t understand the word. 

Second of all, doesn’t it seem sad that “no” is the word of choice? Recognizing his name? Not listed as a milestone. Recognizing the word “yes”? Not listed. Recognizing the word “ball” or “dog” or “milk”? Not listed.

Apparently babies are supposed to live in a world of “no.”

Well, Babby was late to that milestone, because up until recently, he almost never heard the word. If he reached for something he shouldn’t have, I might say “no, honey” absentmindedly as I moved it out of reach, but until he could crawl his opportunites for mischief were so limited that I simply had no need for any kind of discipline.

He recognized his name. He could hand me something if I held out my hand for it. But he hadn’t a clue what the word “no” meant.

But he’s learning it now.

With great power comes great responsibility, and with the ability to crawl comes the beginning of responsibility for one’s actions. When Babby developed his own method of locomotion, I began to enact some basic discipline.

Our very first battle of wills happened at the airport on our way home from Nova Scotia. Waiting at the gate, we put Babby down for a crawl. We decided to make the line where carpet turned to tile flooring a boundary, and if Babby approached it we called “no!”, picked him up, and returned him to our feet.

The great escape: Take 3,354

Of course, he would immediately bee-line for the tiles again, and as soon as he hit the line, we’d call “no!”, pick him up, and return him to our feet.

He thought this was a great game. We didn’t mind. For the first time in his life he was discovering the possibility of resisting our wishes, and it was natural for him to try and test that boundary. Let him learn it now that resistance is futile.

Besides, it’s good exercise for everyone, and it sure keeps him busy!

I don’t know how many times he rampaged towards the tiling only to be cheerily told “no!” and returned to square one.

The kid definitely has a mind of his own, and he thought resisting my will to be HILARIOUS.

But in the end, he began to get bored of crossing the same patch of floor again and again and again and again and again. Finally, he reached the end of the carpet, I called “no!” and stood up from my seat, and he paused. You could see the thought whirling in his tiny brain: “Do I really want to get hauled all the way back there AGAIN?”

processing... processing...

He decided that he would rather explore to the right or left. He crawled away, along the edge of the carpet, and I praised him. He sat up again, grinned at me, and continued his explorations unmolested.

Thus ended Babby’s first lesson in “no”, but not the last.

We had a similar battle of wills at the doctor’s office the other day. Now, though, I only have to do it three or four times before he decides to pause at the threshold of my imposed boundary when I call “no!”, and then decide to explore in a different direction.

He’s learning fast.

That’s the “here’s the rule, don’t cross it” kind of no. I say it quite cheerily (in fact, it often comes out “nope!”). When he hears it he often spends some time figuring out the EXACT boundary. Oh, I can’t touch that thing on the shelf? What about this part of it? No? What about the shelf itself? That’s okay?

It’s not so much that he’s disobeying as exploring the limitations, and I am okay with that.

The other kind of “no” he learned all at once. 

That’s the “STOP!” kind of no.

He was playing with the bottom drawer of his dresser, pulling it open and pushing it closed again with great glee. I was sitting in the rocker and watching, and waiting. The moment I had been worried about arrived: instead of pushing back on the knob that he used to pull the drawer open, he placed his hand on top of the drawer to push it closed.

I jumped up from my chair and said quite harshly, “NO!”

He startled, but it didn’t stay his hand, and the drawer closed on his little fingers.

Now, he doesn’t have much strength, so it just closed on them. When I had whisked them out they weren’t bruised or even pinched. But it still upset him enough to make it memorable for him.

I left him with a friend while PH and I went to see Harry Potter, and the friend remarked on our return that he responded quite well to “no!” when he picked up a computer chord.

Yes, he definitely recognizes urgency, and he responds. Of course, he has no self control yet, so he ends up going back to the cord after a while, but he stops when he hears the word. That’s all I can really ask for at this age, hence, Babby proofing.

But I almost feel safe in saying that he knows what “no” means, now.

Almost.

Hey, boob-lady: LOOK WHAT I'VE GOT!

Babby Update: 9 months and pointing. With videos!

Tags

9 month old, babies, baby sign, child development, crawling, milestones, motherhood, pointing

Time tends to meld when you spend every day at home, like a hamster in a cage (although, as a nervous sort of hamster, I actually appreciate my cage and find it cozy and protective).

Going on vacation really helped put a time-stamp on a lot of Babby’s developmental progress.

I went to Nova Scotia with a baby who was 8 months old, clapping, but not pointing, who was not crawling, and only interested in standing.

I came home three weeks later with a baby who was pointing at everything while making little “ah!” noises, dragging himself around the house on one knee, and pulling himself to standing on every vertical object he could find.

The pointing thing gets a little funny. He points at everything that interests him (his favourites are lights, red things, knobs, and switches) but he won’t identify a named object by pointing.

Also, while I automatically name everything he points at, he’ll continue pointing, and then I’m not sure what to do.

“Fire extinguisher! That’s a fire extinguisher!

…Yep, that’s… still a fire extinguisher. It’s red! It’s… a fire extinguisher! Can you say “fire extinguisher”? Nice try, “gah” is close…

…Okay, that’s… still a fire extinguisher…”

If I can take him over to touch it (i.e. it is safe to play with and reachable) I will. But honestly, it’s like living with the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come the way that unwavering finger is always pointing, pointing, pointing.

He discovered the dimmer switch at my mother’s house, and is now obsessed with light switches. I can always make him smile by picking him up and letting him flick the switch up, turning his bedroom light on, and then down, turning it off. He grins and chortles with delight every time.

He has figured out the sign for milk (opening and closing his hand). I captured the behaviour by sticking a booba in his mouth every time he did it, and after a few experiences of this nature, he began to do it more deliberately. When his little experiments worked, by producing booba, he would nurse with his eyes wide, staring at his hand, opening and closing it thoughtfully.

So now he makes it ALL THE TIME while staring at me expectantly as his hand opens and closes, opens and closes.

Thing is, I’m not sure he really understands that it means milk.

I think he thinks it means Mommy.

Although since he probably percieves me as nothing more than a giant milk sack to begin with, it may simply be that the distinction is too fine at this juncture. He hasn’t picked up any other signs, and he doesn’t try to imitate what we do, either. He thinks it’s awesome when we imitate HIM, though.

I’m glad he’s finally crawling.

He totally figured it out the day after I made the post about how he had no intention of doing it.

It was clearly an accidental discovery.

He was trying to figure out how to stand up and walk, but discovered that one foot flat on the ground could propel the rest of his body along, and so that is what he does now. He treats his left knee like a skateboard and pushes himself with the right foot. It works, although when he gets going he begins to resemble a rampaging gorilla.

My life immediately got a lot easier.

He is now quite happy to move around a room, examining toys, putting dog fur in his mouth, playing with the knobs on his dresser and so on, for ten or twenty minutes at a time. Since he was already scooting around backwards anyway, things haven’t changed much in the watching-him category. The only difference is that now he gets where he wanted to go, and doesn’t end up screaming in rage from the other side of the room.

He wants to be clear, though, that he doesn’t consider this to be an ideal form of locomotion.

He loves to walk around the house while we hold his hands (although he’s still convinced that he would be perfectly capable of doing it himself if we would just let go of him) and he WOULD be cruising around the furniture if he didn’t keep letting go of the couch/table/parental pant leg and attempting to walk off on his own. He invariable falls over, which thankfully he usually finds hilarious.

In fact, after one failed attempt at walking away from the coffee table, he will often pull himself to standing and then let go again and again, for the sheer joy of landing on his butt and then laughing over the funniness of it all. I laugh too, and he thinks I’m laughing with him, but it’s also AT him a bit.

His top teeth are starting to come in, which is not helping the booba-biting situation. The problem with his nipping me at the breast is that every time he does it I yelp. He finds this hilarious and it actually encourages him. I always remove the breast and often plunk him unceremoniously on the floor afterwards, but until I manage to keep my mouth shut he’s going to keep nipping when he gets bored. Meanwhile the skin under my nipples is starting to flake and my boobas itch insanely all the time, probably from sheer irritation.

Itchy boobas aside, I am finding this kid increasingly entertaining with every passing day, and it’s killing me that soon I’ll have to leave him with someone else…