A.S.
I must admit, I don't have any experience with 4 year olds yet - mine is just 16 months. I do know that even this young, and that other friends have all said that acting out tends to be associated with extra stress, less quality, loving time with parents and as someone else said, sleep deprivation. I think sometimes its worth looking at why we don't let our kids do so many things, and maybe having a look at how many "no's" we're always telling them. Why don't we say yes, that's ok more often? A funny thing happened with my son yesterday. He's been peeing every time we put him in the bath, so we started sitting him on the potty before his bath, and sometimes he pees in it. He seems to be learning what its all about, and we praise him when it happens etc. Yesterday he didn't want to pee in the potty, and when he got in the bath, then he did! He looked at me with a bit of worry on his face - as previously I've sort of whisked him out of the bath, onto the potty, but have now decided its not worth it... Anyway, when he looked at me like that I said, oh don't worry, its ok, we'll just see if you can pee on your potty next time! Then when the bath was over, and he was on my lap with no diaper, brushing his teeth, he pointed at his potty. I asked him if he wanted to sit on it, and he indicated that he did. So, I put him on there, and low and behold, he peed! So, what's my point in telling this story? I guess its about priorities... what do we really need them to do or not to do? Will pulling the towels down, or jumping on the bed, getting themselves wet or dirty, or peeing in the bath really matter in the long-run? Will our relationship with them, and how we encourage them to behave appropriately matter more? I think so, and I guess its just a matter of finding out our own comfort zones!
BW,
A.