Thursday, October 23, 2008

More on "Terrible Two" Sean

In continuation to the previous post.

"Terrible Two" Sean is still on the loose!

It's been difficult to get him nap in the afternoon, so he's been extra hyper and cranky.

Bath time is still a struggle. I've taken out the small tub for his bath so he can splash around, as well as let him play with an old bottle to squirt water with. He really enjoys the actual bathing, but..... getting him to go into the bathroom is still difficult. "Sean, bath time!" " Noooo!!" And now that he enjoys Mummy giving his bath regularly again, he doesn't want anyone else to bathe him.

He still spits food and often does not want the maid to feed him anymore. Mummy or daddy has to sit next to him on his kiddy chair and feed him.

He's awfully accident prone. Last week, within a 24hr period, he knocked himself 4 times.

First, just before bedtime, he knocked the edge of a table and had a big split on his lip, which gushes blood everywhere. The next morning, at playgroup, he run into the side of a book shelf while running away from me, and bump his head quite hard. Half an hour later, he tripped and fell face flat on the cement floor. An hour later, at Hun Kee's house, we knocked into the side of a plate I was carrying. It gave him a bruise on his cheek, which is still recovering. When we came home, his daddy asked whether Sean has been in a fight. Sean's face had a blue black and he was dirty and sweaty. Ooops! =P

However.. not everything is bad. Now the good parts! =D

Story of the day
We're going to have a Hallowen party at playgroup next week. So for my craft this time, I made the base for a giant spider pinata and a pumpkin for today, and next week we'll make pumpkin hallowen baskets for the children to hold their sweets.

So today, I was busy directing the mothers to make the spider pinata. As usual, Sean wanted me to do something with him, but because I was busy, I told him to wait and to go play first. When I was ready to spend some time with him, I couldn't find him. He wasn't playing anywhere. Eventually, I found my little boy sitting on a small stool in the library looking at a book! That was such a sweet moment =D

Discipline
The threat of being punished is actually working out quite well. Now all I do is threatened him when he misbehave. I'll say quietly, "Do you want to be punished? Sit on the chair?" Most of the time, it works. So he hasn't been put on the chair since the last blog post... yet.

Cleaning up
Sean has been putting his toys back into their places!

I was so surprised the first time I saw him doing it because I didn't even tell him to do it. I make it a habit to put all his toys always in the same place. His "Cars" cars in an IKEA clear box, his Duplo farm in a basket, his puzzles on the shelf, he also has a plastic drawers for all his other toys and I try to make is a habit to put back all his toys always in the same place.

It doesn't mean that I don't have to clean up after him. Maybe because he sees me always putting the toys back in the same place, he now knows where they are. So if he doesn't want to play something, he puts it back.

But of course, there are times where he just drops a toy and leaves it there. So to discipline him, I stop him and tell him to put it back or pick it up. He's not allowed to go until he does it. It's slowly working for the toys in the room. Now I've got to have a system for the toys in the living room!

4 comments:

Jessica said...

Aiyo! I remember when my niece was 2. She kept falling down and knocking her head. I could be sitting right in front of her, playing with her and 2 seconds of my attention on something else, she'd be on the floor with howling in pain from having bumped her head. Yeah, it's a phase. She's accident free most of the time now.

jazzmint said...

good to know that ur discipline works on him..mine is a tough one, he'd cry like no tomorrow :(

Mamalina said...

Jazzmint: Sean also cries. So I'm not so strict... I don't punish him if he cries too hard.
Most of the time, I just threatened him with punishment. But I have to look and sound angry so he takes me seriously!

Bryan and Brandon's Mama said...

Well done Sean! (not on falling down, I meant)
Boys will be boys. I;ve lost count of the number of bruises and split lips Bryan has.