Teething and an update on some of the issues I’ve written about before.
Well, Ben is getting his first tooth. It’s his bottom right front tooth. He’s actually doing really well with it. Last night we had to give him baby Tylenol because he just wouldn’t go to sleep. My wife is VERY excited about the 1st tooth. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great, but she is just beside herself.
I wanted to revisit two of the things I’ve written about before. I got some comments posted here and more than a few via e-mail.
One is Tehilah waking up during the night. I ended up not doing what I said I would do, i.e. let her cry it out. I go in and lay down next to her for a few moments and she calms down and goes back to sleep. It makes us both much happier. I don’t have the torture of listening to my daughter cry and she sleeps better.
The other thing I wanted to touch on was the discipline issue. Several people objected (some of them quite strongly) to the hand smacking. I want to clear something up. This happens maybe twice a month. In fact, I can’t remember the last time it happened as now Tehilah knows that she can get a hand smack when she is in trouble. Generally we ask her to stop what she is doing and if she doesn’t we ask her if she wants to be in trouble. Then she stops. So I think that this form of discipline has worked. Its a deterrent that we rarely have to use.
Lastly, my mother in law was here recently on a visit and she brought Tehilah two new books from the same series I mentioned before. (Thanks again Ruth!) The first one is Sharing is Fun and its very good. The main theme is that the little boy in the book has friends coming over to play and before they arrive his mommy talks to him about sharing. When the guests arrive there is a bit of a scene over a toy fire truck and the little boy is reminded to share. When ever we get to the page where the boy is pulling the fire truck away from the girl, Tehilah says “No No No!” and shakes her finger to tell him he has to share.
The other book is My Big Girl Potty, by the same author. (My Big Boy Potty is also available.) Its your standard potty training book but I can really see that its helping. Tehilah uses the potty about once a day now that we have started reading the book at bedtime. We aren’t pushing her with potty training. In a month or two once she has gotten more used to the potty, we will really start the toilet training. As of now we just give her lots of encouragement. When she does ‘go’ we tell her what a big girl she is and how proud we are of her. The next step is that we plan to get her some pull up diapers next week. That’s going to be very exciting. 
March 29th, 2006 at 7:51 am
When it comes to smacking, it’s not the frequency - it’s the message it sends. It teaches her that the bigger person wins, and why not use it against her brother if he is smaller? Also, what happens when she gets bigger and can’t be controled with a small smack? Do the smacks get bigger? If the point is that it is something she doesn’t like, why not some other punishment like taking away a toy or privelege?
At some point children need to learn to moderate conflict through compromise and consequences - if she can’t share, she can’t have friends come over. It’s a natural consequence of the action and will have more impact than something random like taking away TV time. In my personal experience, the more you are mean and arbitrary the less likely they are to respect your authority and listen in the future. We can teach them appropriate behavior by modeling it ourselves - which of course makes us realize how very difficult these behaviors can be