More reasonable

Tobey's been a little more reasonable these days with regard to his behavior. I've had a few good days with him, we've had a couple of good weekends where Tobey's been close to an angel. I don't know what it is, age, some recent interesting/engaging activities (shuttle Legos, melon balling, Bible stories to bribe with at night), or maybe me and Tom getting a little wiser in our strategies and discipline. But classically torturous activites (torture for Tobey and for us) are now getting a little better to deal with.

Clean up - We've simplified clean up down to two tasks, putting all vehicles in the flat box and all other small toys in the shopping cart. That pretty much covers everything and it reduces the amount of "put this here, put that there" that we have to say. His sorting exercise is easy and sometimes he can make it fun by sending the cars, planes and trucks down the slide into the flat box or pretend we are shopping for extraneous little toys laying around the house. It's a task we can expect him to do by himself although he still often needs one of us to keep him company to stay on task.

Today he surprised me by being willing to clean up mid-day. The cars and toys were strewn all over the playroom and he wanted to take out Candyland. Having just stepped on the tug boat man, I asked Tobey to clean up the toys (restated the two tasks) before he pulls out Candyland. "Why?" he asks. And I told him there's already too much mess so he needs to clean up the first mess before taking out more toys. "Okay." And he did it with zero nagging/reminding AND he played a game of Candyland by himself! I guess the only thing I'm not sure is if he cheated to get to go over the Rainbow Bridge, something he always wants to do but never gets to under my watchful eye. I asked him if he followed the rules and he said "yes". :-) I was able to slip in a quick lesson about having fun playing by the rules.

Potty and getting dressed - Tobey is also getting more reasonable about these tasks in general (although admittedly Tom had a hard time Saturday when we had to wake him up to go to a preschool function). Now that potty "training" is pretty much in the past, I can trust him a lot more when it comes to whether or not he needs to go when he says (and the other way around). When I want him to try to go before nap or before leaving the house, he'll eventually at least try (depending on the day, he might add a whine to it). I think actually having gone a few times after denying his need to go showed him that sometimes it's worth at least trying to go to the potty even if he doesn't think he needs to.

As far as getting dressed, Tobey has shown a lot of independence. He still often dawdles but with the right incentive, be it Bible story at night or going to school in the morning, he eventually can do it. And the best thing is, he *can* do it so we just don't do it for him anymore. Well, except for Saturday when he got dressed by himself but picked out the wrong clothes for a birthday party so I redressed him while he was engrossed in yet another showing of Jeremy the Jet Plane. Otherwise, now it's lay out the clothes and get dressed yourself.

Eli - Tobey has shown only marginal improvement in this area of harassing Eli. I'm not sure if he's really reformed or if he just got busy doing other things and forgot about picking on Eli. But actually, I mention Eli in this post not in relation to Tobey, but because Tobey is getting a little more reasonable, then I have the energy to deal with Eli, just as Eli is hurtling towards 2 years old. I'm not as exasperated by Tobey (squeaky wheel) that I have no energy left for Eli. Sure, I still get tired of getting Eli out of the kitchen cabinets or kicking him out of our bathroom. But I have enough energy to engage with Eli, whether it's a disciplining redirect or a short tickle fight.

Us - Tom and I are both improving, I think. I think I've been yell-free for a month now, ever since that Parenting is Heart Work seminar. I've strengthened my tone, I've gotten really close to yelling. But I haven't had an outburst that was characteristic of the last 6-9 months. Tom's been great too, persisting in those early days of us trying these parenting strategies when I wasn't sure if they were going to make a difference. And he had a victory yesterday. In a classic example of preschool I-change-my-mind-from-5-seconds ago involving removing and putting back Tobey's bed railing, Tom kept his cool. He did sit on Tobey's bed and silently prayed for patience and strength, which I think usually sends a signal to Tobey that he's really ticked Daddy off, but Tom still kept his cool. Had it been me, last night's situation might have been enough to send me over the edge for the first time in a month. Way to go, Tom!

Not to belittle true recovery programs, but I feel like our little family is in a 12-step program towards being more reasonable. Tom, Tobey and I are working on it. Now if we can just work on Eli who has recently started to perfect the art of complaining.