Advice

Just in case any of my readers ever go through similar experiences like us (i.e. having small children and a sick husband) I have some great advice for you. We know that advice only comes from gaining wisdom, which comes from making mistakes. That's right! We learned a lot yesterday that we would do differently if we had to do it all over again. Due to poor planning on both of our parts, we tried to have Dan recover from a surgery in a small, two bedroom house with a toddler and a baby. It was a whirlwind. We got home around 2:00 and things were smooth for about a half hour. Then Mya and Sara woke up. They both wanted their Daddy, but he couldn't hold them so they were very fussy. I needed to spend some time picking up the house, doing dishes, laundry, and making dinner. Dan needed to be in the recliner in our living room because it was comfortable for him. He was still recovering from being drugged and needless to say, the kids were driving him nuts. I felt like I was juggling way too many balls in the air. So what did we learn? We should have planned to have someone keep the children until the evening so Dan could recover and sleep. We should have planned to get take out dinner, but payday is Friday so we didn't want to spend the money on a meal. And we should have planned to take everyone up on any offer that they gave us to help us out. It was just a tough day for all of us. And to top it all off, Sara started getting sick and was up ALL night with a bad cough. She finally passed out at 6 this morning. Argh!

Another lesson learned is.......don't start a new behavior intervention plan with your toddler the day before your husband has surgery. I had to follow through with things yesterday and the number one thing to know about behavior interventions is that the behavior gets WORSE before it gets better. So that added to the stress yesterday. However, I have to tell you how great the intervention plan is working. It is amazing! If you ever need a very simple, easy plan for a toddlers, give this website a ty http://www.parentmagicstore.com/All-Products/1-2-3-Magic-Parenting?leadsource=79. The program is called 1-2-3 Magic and I can't say enough good things about it. The funny thing is that Dan and I thought we were using this program for the last year or so. The basis of the program is to count to three when your child exhibits a behavior that you want him/her to stop. You are to do this with no emotion in your voice. When you get to three they are to have a consequence. It came to my attention that we were making some big mistakes with this when I was helping out a single mom who needs some behavior interventions with her child. On Monday night I watched the video with her to introduce her to this program. I learned some things too! I learned that we do show emotion (sometimes a lot) when we count with Mya and that we were using paddling way more than time outs. So we changed up how we did things and started putting Mya in her room when we got to three. Eliminating our emotions and putting her in isolation worked wonders. The change happened within the second day. The other thing that we are learning is that we can't give Mya an inch to work with. As soon as we start counting we MUST follow through EVERY time. We are working hard to eliminate the behavior of whining and asking about things over and over and over again. It means that I have to be very attentive to these behaviors throughout the day in order to catch them. I got to the point where I was letting them go quite often because I was tired of hearing her whine. However, I was actually allowing the behaviors to increase and she was having control, rather than us. So that is my perk for the 1-2-3 Magic program. I would recommend it to any parent of young children.