Holly Monkey - The Mellowness Challenge

Holly Monkey

Holly can really only be described as a monkey. A monkey is cute. A monkey is, undoubtedly, clever. A monkey can do fun tricks, jump around a lot and put a smile on your face. But, if you're in a safari park and a monkey pulls your wing mirror off they suddenly don't seem that cute or fun any more, do they? This is just what Holly is like. She is the cutest bundle of scrumptiousness I've ever come across and yet she is also a whirlwind, a wrecking ball, a handful from the very moment she wakes up until the moment she finally drops off to sleep at night.

Having been through the 'terrible twos' and the 'even more terrible threes' with my Lara, I would say that Holly's behaviour has, since she was 9 months old, mirrored that of a child almost exactly 2 years older than her. Right now Holly, at 20 months old, is behaving very much like her big sister did aged 3 and a half and... to be honest, it is exhausting.

My new year's resolution is to stop shouting at Holly and to try not to let it get to me. To stop letting her push my boundaries of sanity and to try and understand her a little more. It is hard when your toddler can't tell you everything they are thinking and I know this is the source of much of the tension and frustration between us.

It has recently crossed my mind that Holly may have some level of hyper activity that we need to address. But she's only 20 months old. It is hard to tell at this age whether it is just cheekiness, or the early signs of longer-term behavioural issues. So I'm going to start with exploring Holly's diet to see if there are triggers for her behaviour there – ketchup, orange squash and chocolate are all on my lists of suspicions.

In the meantime, myself and Mr. B. are looking out for one another and effectively sharing shifts of time with Holly – stepping in when we see the other one being pushed towards the edge by Holly's behaviour. This week we have shouted less at Holly and seem to have had a few more successes when it comes to convincing Holly not to hit us repeatedly over the head with a toy.

We are working with nursery to try and identify the things that make Holly most happy – they've bought her things to climb on and I think we will try and do the same. It will feel nice not to have to say “No” when she climbs on something. Music is another thing nursery have noticed helps Holly to focus so I'm going to spend more time with her listening to different types of music and playing with musical instruments.

I'm hopeful we can make 2014 the year in which Holly finds the mellowness too!

Have I brought up a monster?

Lara's behaviour is pushing me to the boundaries of Mellowness.  Lara was three in June so I know that difficult behaviour is to be expected (I read a great blog post by Emma at Me, The Man and Baby about how the terrible twos really doesn't prepare you for three-year-olds).  But, with every day of bad behaviour that goes past, I begin to wonder whether this really is just a phase that she is going through or whether this is just Lara and it is how she will be until... well... ever?

Lara's awful behaviour started a couple of months before Holly was born.  At the time myself and Mr. B talked about it and decided it was probably just because she knew something was happening and she wanted to make sure that she was cementing her role as the boss of our family.  Understandably, things got a little worse after Holly was born.  Not immediately, but a few weeks down the line.

Lara never directly competes for attention with Holly.  She rarely does anything to Holly that worries me particularly (usually she just gets in her face or occasionally tries to move her across the room).  I know that however hard you try, the attention levels won't ever be the same for the eldest child and it is a trying time for them.  I KNOW these things but I don't know what to do about it; I already feel like Holly is sometimes neglected during our attempts to constantly entertain/placate Lara.

I'm also not wholly convinced that all of Lara's noise, violence, disobedience and stubbornness is down to Holly.  I think that tiredness and hunger have a lot to do with it but Lara outright refuses to nap during the day unless she happens to fall asleep in the car and our attempts to move bedtime slowly forward have been met with 1-2 hour tantrums resulting in bedtime being later than it was originally.

Lara bites.  She throws.  She deliberately ignores instructions and she is a cunning and manipulative individual - she ALWAYS has an excuse or a witty retort to offer.  Part of me is proud that she has the resource and intelligence to behave like this but it makes me deeply upset when I hear her lie or witness her calculated plots from afar (I walked in on her at nursery trying to talk her way out of having pulled the curtain down).

Lara is also noisy.  Now I know that all preschoolers are noisy when they want to be but Lara never every shuts up.  After a particularly heated discussion with Mr. B about Lara's compulsion to talk, I started to watch and listen to other people's children more closely.  Other people's kids talk and shout and sing and chatter but only ever in bursts.  Lara talks from the very second she wakes up until that last, glorious moment before she falls asleep at night (and we secretly rejoice).  Her speech is a lot more advanced than most of her peers and she has a wild and vivid imagination that I want to encourage.  But, for large chunks of the day Lara doesn't have anything she really needs to say or sing... she just talks nonsense.  Noise for the sake of noise.  It is a compulsion.  You can see her get physically twitchy when there is silence.  Holly has already turned into a chatterbox just to try and get herself heard above the barrage of noise that is Lara.

I am sure that it is the noise that makes everything else seem so bad. Here I am with a quiet, placid 3 month old who is so easy to look after compared to Lara, it is bound to make Lara seem noisier and less co-operative than she really is.  I find it REALLY hard to keep my temper when I am trying to explain to Lara what she has done wrong and all I get in return is a rendition of "Eh-Eh-Eggs in a pan" at full volume.

Last week I consulted the health visitor on Lara's behaviour.  The text book advice she gave me was to ignore bad behaviour and reward good behaviour. The problem with this approach is that many of the things Lara does simply can't be ignored because they are too dangerous - take for example climbing up on to the garden table in order to stand and fetch a packet of matches we had put out of reach while she knew I was feeding Holly and couldn't get up quickly enough to stop her.  Sometimes I feel like my whole day has been spent saying "No", and it depresses me that Holly will hear so much negativity from me when I am speaking to her big sister.

I've no idea what I'm going to do about it other than hope that it really is a phase and that she will grow out of it and hopefully come out of the other side with as much enthusiasm for speech and music and as much self-confidence and authority as she does now but without the throwing, biting and nonsense talk.

Shy

I've discovered a new side to Lara. A Lara I didn't know existed. Lara is shy. Lara is scared.

Other than a few short weeks when Lara was about 9 months old, I'd have never thought to use the word “shy” to describe my sociable, happy little girl. With children and adults alike, Lara was able to settle in quickly with a new group of people.

We've always maintained that Lara should be able to enjoy the same events we do which is why, the day before the royal wedding, we took Lara with us for our regular pub date with the guys from work. Lara seemed really excited about going for lunch with Daddy and Mummy's friends. The minute we walked into the pub she changed into a different human being.

Lara went totally silent and hid behind my legs. She wouldn't eat or drink (this happens so rarely with Lara that I worry when she doesn't eat). She wouldn't even show her face. She clung to me like a limpit and squawked whenever anyone tried to speak to her. I was expecting Lara to warm to the people around her. She didn't. This unusual behaviour lasted for a full hour.

As soon as all of our work colleagues left the pub and returned to the office, Lara reverted to her normal smiley cheeky self and polished off her lunch. She wiggled and giggled and even struck up a conversation with the strangers on the table next to us. She wouldn't explain her behaviour to me – what had upset her so much. When I returned to the office, people who have seen Lara as her normal cheerful self commented on how out of sorts she had been.

On the May Bank holiday we took Lara to the May Fayre. She loved seeing all the people, the fair ground rides, the loud stalls and the performances on the stage. But, she did have two episodes which were so unlike her. First, she burst into tears when she saw someone dressed as Iggle Piggle I've always hated people dressed up as characters, but this had never seemed to bother Lara before. Then later, she refused point-blank to get into the children's train; through her tears she described it as 'the scary train'. This coming from the little girl who has been on all of the toddler's rides at Legoland and Peppa Pig World!

That Lara's behaviour has changed does not surprise me. All of her NCT friends are going through similar changes right now and I'm sure that as Lara grows through toddlerhood into childhood that there will be plenty more changes in her behaviour. What leaves me feeling uncomfortable is being unable to help her. I wasn't prepared for this new Lara's arrival and I'm not sure what comfort or support I can offer her.

A Bite At Nursery - How Would You React?

A fortnight ago, shortly after Lara started at nursery, I witnessed a heated exchange between a member of nursery staff and a distraught mother whose child had been bitten by another toddler. After exclaiming "Oh.... My... gawd", the woman burst into tears before then launching a tirrade of abuse at the staff. "Tell me who did this" (they can't), "I demand to speak to the parents" (err, you can't), "I demand that the child be disciplined" (err, they're one year old).

As I left the nursery that night, I chatted to Mr. B. about how we would have reacted if it had been us. Was this woman overreacting? Is there anything you can do to prevent toddlers biting one another? surely we all learned that biting is a bad thing to do ourselves through biting (and being told off) or being bitten (and it hurting)? Should I be worrying more about this?

Yesterday, I found out how I would react. I received a call at work and it went something like this:-

Nursery: "Mrs Button, Lara was bitten by another child. They
was a disagreement over a toy."

Me: "OK"

Nursery: "We put a cold compress on it but we think it
will bruise."

Me: "OK"

Nursery: "The staff have spoken to the other child and
have explained to them their behaviour was bad. We'll speak to the parents
later."

Me: "OK"

I'll admit that there was a little butterfly in my stomach when I received the call, that I wanted to rush to Lara and give her a cuddle and give the other child a big scowl and some grumpy vibes. So I asked,

Me: "How about Lara, how's she doing?"

Nursery: "Oh, she's fine. She's no idea what we're
making all this fuss about!"

That's my girl.

Forget Halloween, I Have A Little Devil All Year Round

This week's theme at Tara's gallery is The Colour Red.

It seems fitting then that I received through the post Lara's Halloween outfit from Clothing At Tesco this week. It certainly isn't an 'investment' garment, but for an item of clothing that may possibly be worn only once, it seems like good value at £7.

Lara seems to hate wearing the hood, which is a shame as it makes her look super cute (if a little like a wrestler). My favourite part of the outfit is this...

As it is, Lara doesn't really need a devil outfit at present. Her behaviour is hellish enough as it is. I really don't know how the childminder copes! On my one day off a week (my Lara day) she is such hard work that I am totally worn out by the evening and can barely keep my eyes open. At the weekends, even with Mr. B. around, the feeling is the same.

Lara is going through a stage of asserting herself. She has learned the word, "No" and is using it to prove that she is the dominant one in this parent-child relationship.

This Thursday, after 2 hours of failed attempts of getting Lara to take her afternoon nap in her cot, I discovered her stood up in the cot, screaming, her dress held up around her neck, her nappy off and hurled across the room and she was stood, rattling the bars of her cot, standing in a pool of her own wee. Urgh.

This weekend, Mr. B and I both nearly reached meltdown in Ikea. To start with, it seemed like a good idea. We sat Lara in a groovy trolley and did the whole upstairs Ikea thing. Then we had a pretty successful lunch in the canteen (bargain kids meals of real food, which include a free piece of fruit). After lunch, things went downhill. Lara had energy to burn but she wasn't happy. She screeched an annoying, miserable wail all the time she was in the trolley which eventually started to draw 'looks' from other customers. All attempts at removing her from the trolley resulted in her running at full pelt in the opposite direction to us and hanging on to furniture and displays that she really shouldn't have been hanging on to. We did, eventually, make it out alive but I swear it'll be at least another 5 years until our next visit.

If you read my posts about bedtime and about dropping the dummy then you will know that Lara goes to bed quite late. Recently, I have found myself wishing that Lara went to bed at 6.30, rather than 8.30!

I know we'll get through this, and I also know that there is worse to come, but I shall attempt, as ever, to remain MELLOW.