Highly Opinionated

When Samantha was born, both the midwife who helped me deliver her and Sam's pediatrician used the same phrase to describe her: highly opinionated.  Even though Adam and I didn't mind the idea of a highly opinionated child (in fact we bragged a bit!), we never saw it.  She seemed like a pretty average baby, and in some ways, pretty easy - sleeping through the night at 10 weeks and adapting to all kinds of new situations with relative ease.

I don't know what those experts could see in a newborn, but recently, their predictions have come true.  Sam has reached the developmental stage where she is asserting her own will.  This has been building for weeks, but she really hit her stride in the past week.  And as always, the biggest challenge of parenting, (given that you have some good basic principles) is keeping up with the changes.

Sam is using every trick in the book to get our attention or to see what she can get away with.  When I give her a two-option choice, she says, "A," and then as soon as I start to act on it, she says, "B."  By the time I realized that this was not cute, I had already accepted it as normal and it never hit me to change how I react. 

She has started to scream for hours most nights.  At first I thought it was nightmares and I would go in to comfort her, but we've been through this whole cycle before and the solution is always to stop going in. We stopped going in about 5 days ago and we had one quiet night, but now she's back to marathon crying.  I'm not sure how she has any voice left.

She started refusing to look at us when we talk, especially after a time-out when we'd talk to her about what she did wrong.  Adam actually made some good headway on this issue by giving her a series of about 20 time-outs until she looked at him when he talked.  But it's still a problem.

She's been crying wolf with the "boo-boos."  When brushing her teeth, she points to her mouth and says "boo-boo."  When she wants to delay putting on her coat just one more minute, she finds a bruise or scrape and says, "boo-boo."  And when all else fails, she hurts herself.  She'll fall out of a chair or run into something, and yesterday, she took hold of a table leg with both hands and slammed her forehead into it.  This was right after she tripped over the rug and banged her eye on Adam's elbow, which was right after a 45 minute time-out session where she threw herself out of the chair about 100 times, and just prior to puking up her first bite of dinner because she had been crying so long and hard she couldn't hold down food.

Because we've been moving, I haven't been able to keep up with these changes.  But Adam and I both knew we had to change something after this weekend, and after talking about it, we're going to crack down with the time-outs.  We were very consistent with using time-outs for hitting and she completely stopped that.  Since then, I've tried to use the time-out only for heinous behavior, but as her behavior has gotten worse, I've raised the standard of heinous for fear of giving too many time-outs.  This is not the way to do it.  There need to be firm standards for her behavior, and more time-outs will lead to less time-outs (I hope).  We've decided to give time-outs for:

• Any type of physical force: hitting, pushing, biting, etc.


• Not following instructions after a maximum of 2 repetitions plus one warning. 


• Screaming or yelling in response to a question after one warning to speak nicely.

We've also decided to renew our commitment to ignoring her when she gets hurt.  This is extremely difficult to do and I used to be very good at it.  But lately I've been trying to comfort her more since I worry about her being unsettled from the move.  WRONG.  As Adam pointed out, the best thing we can do to help her through the chaos of the move is to remain consistent.  And I'm scared enough by the head-banging to stop worrying about whether she needs a hug.

Another reason my efforts at discipline are degenerating is that I have not been clear on whether or not I should expect obedience from her.  Up until now, we've tried to mostly use distraction and playing games to get her to cooperate, so I haven't had to really face the issue of obedience - the dreaded, YOU MUST DO IT BECAUSE I SAID SO.  But at this age, Sam must obey.  We give her explanations and always speak to her with respect.  We do not bark orders at her.  We give her choices.  We give her time to process what we say and we give her warnings that a change will be coming up (3 more times down the slide then we leave the playground, etc.).  But there are no games or distractions that will get Sam to cooperate with a diaper change or put on her coat anymore if she decides not to.  Her whole purpose right now is to try NOT to do what we say, just to see if she can get away with it.  She knows when I'm weak or hesitant to give a time out, and that's when she tests me.  Still, I don't like the word, "obey."  Yesterday I coined the term, "listen and do."  Sam is now required to "listen and do," and when we talk to her about it, we explain how she needs to listen with her ears, understand with her mind, and do with her body.

I really have no idea if Samantha is any more opinionated than other children her age.  But I do know that if there is a difference, it's just a matter of degree.  This defiance is natural and necessary.  And it's our job as parents to guide her towards independence within boundaries.  Wish us luck!