I Want Some Attention

We’ve been working on a little something called, “I want some attention” at our house recently. In the zone between independent play and Mama-I’m-ready-for-you-to-drop-everything-else-and-only-be-with-me, Cavanaugh and I are apt to have some trouble.

Recent incidents include painting on the umbrella stand and daybed, putting crayons under the pillows in the bed, and dumping toys, instruments, art supplies, or whatever else is handy on the floor. The difficulty is that I’m not always in the room when any of this is happening. Cavanaugh will be happily building duplo block towers while I unload the dishwasher or carry the detritus that has gathered into a hazard up the stairs. Either an unlikely silence or much crashing has come to indicate that my presence is needed.

The first time I was aware this was happening (heavens knows how many it had occurred when it just hadn’t registered), I got out of the shower and heard no noise coming from downstairs. None. Here’s the thing about my son, he likes to chat. He narrates what he’s doing or talks to his toys as he plays: “Oh no, the tracks are falling apart. Percy crashed. Come to the rescue, Butch.”

When I walked downstairs, still damp and swathed in a towel because my mama senses had gone on high alert, I found ballpoint pen all over the couch. I reminded Cavanaugh that we only draw on paper. I asked “Why?” I took some deep breaths. But I know Cavanaugh knows he’s not supposed to draw on the furniture. He hadn’t forgotten. He had made a choice.

“I dinnen’t want you take a shower.”

So I ran through my options: yell, explain calmly why what he did was not okay, threaten to put all markers, crayons, pens, colored pencils, or any other marking device up so that he can’t play with them on his own, make him sit on the couch and think about what he had done. While I thought about which might actually be at all effective ad reminded myself that I believe in positive discipline rather than in punishment and fear tactics, I googled “ink stain removal couch.”

In my exasperated, totally not positive voice, I said, “Cavanaugh I need to be able to take a shower. If you want or need me, you can come upstairs and talk to me. We can sing a song. You can play with your cars. But you can not draw on the couch.”

Then it dawned on me that Cavanaugh was trying to get my attention. He didn’t want me to take a shower because he wanted to play with me. So I sat down on the floor where I could look him in the eye and asked him, “Cavanaugh were you trying to get my attention?”

He nodded and flopped into my lap in one motion. I so didn’t feel like cuddling. But that was exactly the point. He just needed me to slow down and be with him.

“Okay Cavanaugh, here’s the deal, we can’t play right now because we need to clean this pen off the couch. If you want my attention, do you know what you can do? You can say, ‘Mama I want some attention. If you draw on the couch, do you know what is going to get my attention? The couch is.”

So the couch got attention from both of us. (Hand sanitizer gel on microfiber works wonders, by the way.)

Though we’ve had a few repeats, for the most part they are de-escalating. Cavanaugh is intentionally doing something he knows will make me stop everything else, even if what I’m giving him next is my “mad voice” instead of some positive attention. I watched my high school students do this. I still do this, to my husband. When my blood sugar gets low or I’ve had a long mama day with no adult contact, rather than just saying, “I want some attention,” I’ll pick a fight.

Rather than the labyrinthine route most of us go through just to get a little notice, I’m working on teaching both of us how to straight up ask to get our needs met. My goal is as many ways to ask for positive attention as he can figure out methods to get the negative kind. I’ll list them below in case anyone in your house could use a little help with this too.

• “I want some attention.”
• “Can I have some cuddles?”
• “Be with me.”
• “I want to play with you.”
• “Carry me.” (Okay, I don’t actually use this one myself. But it works great when Cavanaugh says it.)

Read This: Playful Parenting

I’ve talked to quite a few parents who have never read a parenting book, or who read them and decided to stop because they said the advice of the experts got in the way of listening to their own intuition. I am not one of those parents. For one, my intuition (or interpretation of it) is informed by my own childhood, and I have absolutely no desire to parent the way I was parented. Secondly, for just about every job I’ve ever held, training has been necessary, whether through reading manuals, shadowing someone more experienced, or learning while on-the-job. Since I consider parenting to be the most important job I’ll ever have, I’m open to learning new approaches to it, theories about it, and tactics for doing it better. Third, I love to read. What all of this adds up to is that I’ve read a lot of parenting books.

Of all of them, Playful Parenting by Lawrence J. Cohen is my hands-down favorite. I just finished reading it for the second time and let’s just say many of the pages are dog-eared, especially the chapters “Accept Strong Feelings (Theirs and Yours)” and “Rethink the Way We Discipline.”

Playful Parenting offers a parenting approach I find tremendously valuable. It makes interactions with children more fun, fosters clearer communication and a stronger connection between parent and child, and offers an alternative discipline approach rather than the typical punitive or permissive models.

Cohen just understands kids, and his book combines strategies and examples in a way that teaches the reader how to be a more playful parent. I would recommend this book to all parents because the methods apply whether you have an infant or a teenager and are utilitarian in the sense that they will actually work in the real world: when you and your child are cranky at the end of the day, when you’re standing in line at the grocery store, when your nine year old says, “I’m bored” or your teenager is ditching school.

No more, “If you don’t do this, then I’m gonna…!” No more time-outs. Instead of power struggles, Cohen advocates connection. It’s well worth reading Playful Parenting to learn how to make and keep that connection even when your own cup is empty, even when your child is pushing you away. If you read no other parenting book, read this one.

View all my reviews.

Read: When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’ “

We had a horrible day yesterday so my friend’s Facebook link to the article “When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’ ‘” by Alfie Kohn, author of Unconditional Parenting, was perfectly timed.  If you’re trying to figure out your discipline strategies, this will give you a new perspective.

Worst Mama Day Ever

It started with hearing my husband’s car pulling out of the driveway at 7:24 a.m. this morning and then Cavanaugh waking up. I’ve had insomnia for days. It was too early. I say to Cavanaugh, “No please, just go back to sleep.” He doesn’t. I get up to pee, he asks to go downstairs and I, grumpy mean grumpy, say, “This is why you need to sleep in your own bed. If you can’t just go back to sleep, I don’t want you to be in the bed anymore.” He lay down on the floor where he hung out for 15 minutes while I lay in the bed hoping he was asleep. He wasn’t. I wasn’t. We went downstairs. I feel like a horrible mom for snapping and threatening.

Then we got downstairs and I realized I was out of milk to make my coffee. Besides having been snapped at first thing in the morning, I think Cavanaugh was feeling fragile from hurting his lip yesterday. He didn’t want to leave the house, didn’t want to cuddle, wouldn’t even agree to go to the bouncy castle place where we normally hang out with our friends on Wednesday mornings. I needed my mama friends today, needed some perspective, and the time off that comes with him running around a place that will entertain him. Instead he wanted to go to a music class I’d made the mistake of mentioning last night. I was planning on skipping the sample and signing us up for afternoon classes, but he had something else in mind.

No coffee. A box of eight puzzles I’d already sorted the pieces for thrown all over the floor while I went to take a shower, my computer freezing twice, and then I looked up the wrong location and realized when we were two turns from arriving that we were going to the location for the afternoon class. I called my husband to look up the address and neither google maps nor mapquest showed that address. I yell at my husband. We get to the class, very far from our house and at an assisted living center. Cavanaugh loved the class. I was dizzy from the smell of scented candles. They said the afternoon class at the other location probably won’t make.

Cavananugh doesn’t want to stop at one of the ten coffee shops we pass on our way home, including the one two blocks from music class. He wants to go to our special coffee shop, the one right next to the bouncy castle place. We get there, he drinks his organic chocolate milk out of a box in about 30 seconds. I have taken two sips of my coffee. He’s asking for more chocolate milk. We’re both hungry and now he’s willing to go to bouncy castles, but our friends will be leaving soon and we need lunch. We get in the car to drive home so I can make food.

I am aware that I could have stopped for coffee on the way to class and risked being a few minutes late. I could have insisted we just stop at the closest shop so that I could get coffee. But it wasn’t just the lack of caffeine. I had woken on the wrong side of the Earth this morning and nothing was helping.

I don’t trust myself to assert what I want without being snappy and mean. I just think maybe I will feel nicer if I raise my blood sugar. When I go into the kitchen to fix sandwiches, Cavanaugh tries to pull the straw out of my iced latte and dumps it all over the table. I yell, “Noooooo!’ Not sadly. Meanly. Madly. He’s too upset for us to go to the grocery store for milk now, or to go back through a coffee drive-thru. Too sad to get in the car. Needs hugs and apologies and the reminder that I know he didn’t mean to spill the coffee. I’m holding him in my arms thinking, “Is this the kind of mama I want to be? Is this how I want to react?” I am telling myself to take deep breaths. I want to give myself a time out, but when I try to leave the room, he cries harder.

I manage to pull it together, make sandwiches, sit with him so we can eat, then get us in the car to go for coffee and run errands, including a stop at my urologist’s to pee in a cup to see if I have yet another kidney infection. I drop Cavanaugh off at Mike’s work so they can hang out for a couple of hours because Mike has to work day and night shifts for third day this week. I go to a movie — 500 days of Summer. It was all right. I loved the music. It’s just what I need to escape my head space for 95 minutes. I walk out of the theater and see Cavanaugh laughing. He’s so pleased they sneaked up and were “peeking” at me. He is cheerful for the five minutes it takes for the three of us to leave the picnic table then get him into the car, where he discovers the pen he’s been using is out of ink. He will not accept the other two pens I offer him. They are the wrong color. He throws them on the floor of the car. Mike leaves for work.

Cavanaugh falls asleep on the way home. I stop at the grocery for milk for tomorrow morning’s coffee. Cavanaugh sleeps on my shoulder until we’re almost out of the store, then wakes up, and gets his finger stuck in a grocery basket. When I try to move him, skin scrapes off his thumb. He is sobbing in the check-out line.

We get upstairs for bed 45 minutes past his bedtime. We go through the bedtime routine. Right before we read stories, I say “We had a bad time today.” I say again how sorry I am for being mad, how mamas are not supposed to yell at kids, and how no matter what happens I love him. He leans his head on my shoulder. We both needed the reassurance. I read him, Mama, Do You Love Me? I come downstairs then hear him talking to himself on the monitor. I look and he’s out of bed in a strange hunched over position. He is pooping. I change the diaper and come back downstairs. He talks to himself for awhile then falls asleep. Normally, I would have stayed up there until he was asleep, but I can’t do it tonight. We’ve just finally had a good moment. I don’t want to screw it up.

Tomorrow morning, coffee. Tonight, an earlier bedtime.

How to Say “No” to Your Kid and Let Him Say “No” to You

I just read a great article from Dr. Sears on “18 Ways to Say ‘No’ Positively.”

The two I relate to the most are #3: create alternatives to “no” and #11 “no” is a child’s word too.

#3– Cavanaugh’s a real risk taker and likes to climb and jump. Along with “hot” when he’s nearing the stove and “danger” as he approaches the street, we instituted “gravity” for all those times when awareness of Newton’s bump from the apple would keep our boy safe.

#11-Cavanaugh turned 2 1/2 recently and has been very creative with his use of the word “no.” I realize he’s interested in establishing some control over his world, so when I’m not exasperated or exhausted by being told what not to do all day, I am proud and/or amused. Here are some of his greatest hits:

1. “No say no.” He especially likes to use this one when he’s going to ask for something he knows he’s not likely to get, like a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast. We use Dr. Sears’ suggestion #9, a positive sub: “You can have a bagel or an egg for breakfast.”
2. “No like this one.” Man, does this apply to a lot of things. We frequently just ask, “Which one do you like?” Often, it’s the one we just offered.
3. “No go this way.” Talk about a backseat driver. It cracks me up to look in the rearview mirror as I’m driving and have my little one navigating us out of the neighborhood. He doesn’t react if I go another direction. It’s just one more way for him to say he wants to have a voice in where we’re going and what we’re doing.
4. “No be here. Go away.” Mike gets this one a lot right as he returns from work. It really hurt Mike’s feelings at first. We quickly realized it was an extension of a toddler’s need for transition. Even though Cavanaugh refers to his daddy coming home throughout the day and is excited about what they will do together, he needs a few minutes to transition from Mama Time to Daddy Time.
5. “No want pajamas” as he throws them off the bed, along with his nighttime diaper. We started letting him pick out his outfit for the next day and dressing him in that instead of pajamas. The next morning, all he needs is a new diaper and he’s good to go.

He’s been a great communicator since he was born and isn’t shy about saying what he wants.

We’re trying not to be shy about saying what we want either. It’s hard to feel in conflict with our boy and exhausting to practice boundaries all the time. It feels like the most terrible part of two’s to me. I heard an analogy years ago that absolutely sums up my beliefs about “no”: “No” is like a wall. If you know where the boundary is, you can lean on it, derive support from it, and relax within the limits. If you don’t know where the boundary is, that doesn’t mean it’s non-existent. It just means that you can run into it and get hurt.

Running on Empty

I want a vacation, even a long weekend, all by myself with no one else to clothe, no one to come to the bathroom with me or to ask to nurse in the middle of the grocery store. Maybe it’s the developmentally appropriate but exhausting conflicts that come with having a 2 1/2 year old. Maybe it’s that the last three years have been hard ones full of lay-offs and other money concerns, health challenges and innumerable other setbacks that add up over time. I’m sure there’s not one cause.

Read This: Connection Parenting

Connection Parenting: Parenting Through Connection Instead of Coercion, Through Love Instead of Fear, 2nd Edition by Pam Leo

This is a great overview for parents who don’t have time to read tons of parenting books. The author was a childcare provider for 22 years and then taught parenting workshops for 16 years before writing this book. Connection Parenting asks one to reflect about one’s own parenting goals and inheritance (how one was parented). That grounding in history and future helps to deal with parenting in the present: how to communicate, understand what a child is communicating, discipline, and make sure everyone’s cup is full. I especially appreciate her understanding that no matter what our parenting goals are, if we’re exhausted or empty as parents, we can’t use all of our great parenting tools or knowledge. Each chapter has a list for further reading. This is a quick read with a very straightforward and humane approach to parenting.

View all my reviews.

Read This: Unconditional Parenting

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason by Alfie Kohn

The concept of unconditional parenting appeals to me, the idea that we love our kids unconditionally: whether they behave, throw a tantrum, do (or don’t do) well in school. Kohn debunks many popular discipline strategies including time-outs, positive reinforcement and praise, reward systems, and punishment. Instead he offers thirteen parenting techniques that help parents to honor their kids and to treat them as if they like them rather than are in charge of them. He also challenges parents to consider how they would feel if they were receiving the treatment they’re giving their kids. Are we helping our children feel loved and accepted even when their behavior is not acceptable? He warns against the unspoken message, “We love you honey; we just hate almost everything you do” (143) and offers strategies for dealing with problematic behavior.

I liked the ideas in this book, though I felt like Kohn kept repeating himself to try to drill home people’s understanding of why to do it. I’d bought in pretty early on so I was ready for application advice way before he gave it. One of the things I appreciated most about this book was Kohn’s insistence on seeing a child as a whole person with needs of his or her own, needs that are not or should not be secondary just because of being a child. Unconditional Parenting offers many logical and loving parenting and discipline strategies to help meet a whole family’s needs. It just took awhile to get there.

If you want my Cliff’s notes version, read the chapters and pages I found most helpful:

* “Giving and Withholding Love” 24 – 42
* From “Punitive Damages” 64 – 73
* “Pushed to Succeed” 74 – 77
* “Principles of Unconditional Parenting” 119 – 139
* “Love Without Strings Attached” 143 – 162
* “The Child’s Perspective” 191 – 211

View all my reviews.