Conference moira::parenting_v3

    Cal,
    
    Welcome to the REAL TWOS!!!  Now he's two-and-a-half, what all those
    two-year-old stories were really about!  Did you notice that the
    two-year mark wasn't so bad?  That's because it doesn't start until
    NOW!
    
    More specific to your situation, I think that when little kids know
    that something is wrong (like mom in the hospital) they can kick in a
    bit of "best behavior", but when the initial pressure is off (mom is
    home) they can relax and start to react.
    
    And, I think you are right - he is pushing your buttons and showing
    mommy how much he misses her!  I think it all goes together.
    
    I feel like I know Sam!
    
    Good luck - it's going to be a fun few months!!!!
    
    Jane

< Note 233.1 by 3268::JANEB "NHAS-IS Project Management" >
                                -< Go SAM Go! >-

    >>>>That's because it doesn't start until
    NOW!

Oh, groan (with a big smile). He was so angelic after I put him
to bed. I asked if he wanted music, he replied, "MUSIK PLASE."
Talk about button pushing.

Then there was the cat. She didn't want to come home when I
called. Judy went out the back and picked her up and she was
purring all the way in.

Sam musta had an agreement with the cat to see how many times
they can push daddy.

Yup, TOWers start about now and NEVER ends.

calvin

    Cal,
    
    I can only re-iterate Jane's response ... you've just found out
    what the terrible twos is all about!
    
    Yup, he knows how to push your buttons all right !  If it's any
    consolation, Rowena, our candidate for the terriblest of the terrible
    twos is doing it too!  She can be SO angelic one minute and then ....
    
    example ...
    
    She is helping to pick up toys in the living room ... No problem.
    TOys are getting carried to bedrooms!  Great I thought....
    
    "Rowena, would you like to take Daddy's shoes to his bedroom?" (feeling
    really lazy and desrous of a slave at this point of the day!)
    
    "No, You do it!" And the shoes get put on my lap!
    
    You can't help but laugh though!
    
    It does sound likely that Sammy is getting his own back for your wife
    being in hospital though.  Ours give Jane murder when I go away, and
    when I get back I am the ogre ... and get paid back!
    
    Stuart

    Cal, 
    
    I think Sam has been living at my house too!!! Berk is a perfect angel
    while he stays alone with my husband (I've been away for 2 5-day trips
    in the past month) and when I get back he was a complete monster, very
    uncooperative. We've been trying to figure this one out and I think
    part of it is because I do more than my share a child caring on a
    normal basis, consequently my tolerance level is a higher then my
    husband's. When my husband says something to Berk it is done almost
    immediately. If I didn't get an immediate response and resorted to
    punishemnt everytime, Berk would spend his life sitting in the middle
    of the front hall and never go out again or play with another toy. 
    
    It does somewhat work the other way because my husband is gone this
    week and I know Berk misses him, so he has started acting up in the
    past 2 days. Yesterday, I almost put price sticker on him in the
    grocery store, placed him on the "nut" shelf and left him there because
    he was being so naughty.
    
    I  do often forget he is only 2 and we cannot expect him to be a little
    gentleman every moment of the day. I'm being optimistic that when he
    gets to 4 or 5, he will have out grown the "terrible two's"!!
    
    Oh well, when angels falter....
    
    Andrea
                            

    I do hate this "terrible two's" label -- as if the child was
    deliberately trying to be mean.  What follows is my vastly
    oversimplified attempt to summarize _The_Magic_Years_, by
    [Sylvia?] Fraiberg -- a very useful book for understanding what's
    going on in a toddler's mind:
    
    A child that age, or even older, is still at what Dr. Fraiberg
    calls the Magic Thinking age.  They think that whatever happens
    was caused by something they thought or did.  So if a bad
    situation is happening around them, they tend to think it's
    because they thought or did something bad. 
    
    So while one parent is gone, most children are going to be on
    their best behavior -- they've already made one bad thing happen;
    if they're bad again, maybe the other parent's going to leave,
    too. 
    
    But then when the other parent does get back, and they see that
    nothing really bad happened (the parent didn't die), they're angry
    and react by punishing the parent for scaring them like that.
    
    Dr. F's book is long on theory and short on advice, like whether
    it's better to relax the rules a bit to allow the child to get
    back his/her emotional equilibrium, or whether it's important to
    keep the rules firm so the child understands that the world goes
    on.  I suspect that keeping the rules firm, but adding extra doses
    of sympathy and comfort, would work . . .
    
    --bonnie

>    I do hate this "terrible two's" label -- as if the child was

I don't think of the label meaning the kid is terrible ... but more that
we tend to cope terribly with the child's new found cognisance of the world
and the kid's reaction to it.

Certainly the logic you describe, Bonnie, would fit the behaviour pattern
we all see.  It still doesn't make it any easier to cope with.  But fortunately
children at this age do forgive relatively quickly and the worst is over in
a few days after absences like this.

Stuart