抛砖引玉

Per BZ's request, I'd like to share some of my experience with you all. In fact, there aren't too many those occasions that I felt 快要失去耐心时. I have to think really hard, and try to remember what happened exactly during the last 20 months.

I have to acknowledge that my son is, in general, a very mellow baby boy. He has demonstrated extreme cautiousness when he was only 3 months old. My mother and I started giving him baby cereal early since he was born with rather a strong neck (he didn't require any head support since the day he was born), so by the time he was 3 months old, he was holding himself up pretty well. He liked oatmeal cereal immediately, however, every time we feed him, he'd be always cautious for the first bite, he'd eat it very slowly, and only took in a tiny bit food, then taste it, if he doesn't hate it, he'd take his 2nd bite and 3rd bite. By now, once he figured out that he really like the stuff, he'd make noises to ask for more and quickly. Sometimes, I felt I almost couldn’t keep up with his demand.

Well, as all babies do, he learnt more skills as he gradually grew up. By the time he was 6/7 months old, he didn’t want to get diaper changed on the changing table, he fought pretty hard when I tried to put him down. I talked with him, tried different tricks, but he was just not cooperating. Changing diaper became a very tiring and long process, by the time my husband got home, I’d felt mentally exhausted. So, I’d ask my husband to do the next diaper change. If he got home late, I’d hold my breath, and keep telling myself, it’s normal, it’s only normal… The problem was finally solved after I asked the daycare teachers how they handled it during the day. They gave me a very simple trick, just give him a diaper /or a toy to hold on to… I tried immediately, worked like a wonder. I guess it took his mind off the diaper change thing. So talk about the frustration with others (do not need to be professionals) will help.


Another incident happened when he was about 14 months, he refused to get into his high chair for dinner, he wanted to continue to play. He cried and screamed when we try to take him away from his toys. My mother was trying very hard to explain and comfort him, it didn’t help but made him acting even worse. Both my husband and I said something nice hoping to help him to get over it, didn’t work either. So, I told him “well, looks like you don’t want our help. Okay, we will not help you then. You can work it out yourself.” Then told my mother and my husband to sit down and have dinner, pretend that nothing has happened. It only took maybe 2 minutes for him to realize that he was being excluded from something that everyone else were all participating, he crawled over to me quickly, and looked up to me with almost a smile, so I said gently, would you like to have some dinner? He nodded, and ate happily with us together.

Most recently, his has shown me some toddler personality. Everything is no, no, no. Of course, he said in such a soft and cute way, it’s really hard for me to get upset. Even though, I do worry that he is not getting enough nutrition. But, I know forcing him to eat is even worse. I keep my frustrations inside, only to talk it over with my husband. In the meantime, I try different way that I can think of to get him to do things that I want him to do. If I want him to eat breakfast, I’ll sit down and start to eat without asking him at all, then he’d come over and check out what’s in my plate, he will want to try it too. For watching TV, he wants to watch one particular section of a Barney DVD over and over again, I have to rewind it for him every 10 minutes or so in order to keep him happy. So, I decided to tell him that Barney is going home after next round, we’ll say bye-bye to him. Now he got the idea, he even turned the TV off all by himself last night after I said it’s time to say bye-bye.

I think it’s important that as parents, we know our kids first. Because they’re truly different in many ways, observe them, and figure out what works, what doesn’t. Try different approaches with love and hope, they’ll be just perfect!

Cheers,