One of those days

and I mean it in a good way.

Hollis has been pinchy pinchy lately. David said he was going to send him to lobster school. Seriously, its been bad. I tried putting him in time out but ugh the time out is just so heartbreaking that I dont see how it could be a useful discipline tool. So i started poking around on GCM and it has been mutually agreed upon that traditional time-outs are punitive. That's not what I want. Punitive discipline and punitive parenting in general tends to create an adversarial relationship between parents and children. and to quote Jane and Michael banks, "If you wont scold or dominate us, we'll never give you cause to hate us..."

So my post on the discipline board led to my own realization that it would be better to remind him of "gentle" touches and also that if he is learning to pinch, perhaps he should have a healthy, safe outlet for practicing such a skill. It was also suggested by other posters, and also the whole sensory stimulation thing was thrown around and I began to look into ways to provide him with more and different vestibular/proprioceptive stimulation since that seems to be where he struggles (and as a colicky baby, likely where he has ALWAYS struggled).

I talked to my husband about these things and he agreed that time-out, as we were approaching it, was a bit too punitive and adversarial, and he likes the ideas I came up with to help Hollis' sensory issues even if it means not going on vaca and using the money for that. for one thing, H just can't tolerate more than a couple hours in the car, which wouldn't get us very far, and for another thing, david will likely never get a week off of work. We began last night to just ask H to be gentle when he was pinching. He obliged without hesitation and was praised for such.

Alas, when I went to give him his bedtime snack last night I chose applesauce and instead of doing a fisted grab on his spoon, he used his pincer grasp. *bells going off*

Today, i pulled him up in my lap to nurse him while we watched Mary Poppins and he pinched my arm as he was latching on. I told him no pinching, and that I can't hold him if he's going to pinch me because it hurts. He looked me in the eye and did it again, so I put him down on the floor. He stood up, turned around and laid his head down on me crying. I waited a moment before deciding to give him another chance. As soon as he was in my arms he began using his gentle touches. I latched him on and he did his gentle touch on my arm where he'd previously pinched me. I told him that was much better, and how much more i like it when he's gentle. After another couple of seconds, he stopped nursing, stood up in my lap and hugged my head all of his own volition. I took it as his apology for doing something that was hurting, cause he knows when mama's crying you give her a hug and it helps her feel better (david taught him that, hah), and also his thanks for our newfound grace-based approach to his little lobster claws. I love that little boy.



I ventured to storytime at the library today after going to rent movies yesterday and seeing Ms. Roz. Storytime here consists of usually an art project, a few songs, a couple of books, a short movie clip, and then some playtime with small manipulatives or puzzles. Hollis of course just wants to run and scream and stomp on peoples art projects and steal their cars and smash their block towers. Its incredibly stressful on both of us as I'm aware that people are looking at me wondering why I haven't whooped him and why I can't control my child, and Hollis wants really hard to behave but he's an impulsive toddler who seeks extra vestibular sensory input (*ding ding ding*). But I figure he has to learn some social skills, and there are other fringe benefits as well, so I'm determined to gracefully get him through story time at the library. Today, he survived the art project thankfully because it was sticker art, and he really likes that (we've been incorporating a lot of sticker art into our "homeschool" stuff lately), then for the songs I tried really hard to get him to dance along. During the stories I stood up and rocked him and did the fussy baby dance (another mom was there doing the fussy baby dance with her newborn, which made it all the more awkward for me to have to be doing it with an almost 1.5 yr old), and during the movie we went out into the main part of the library and chose a new movie to check out, then we made our way back to the story time room for playtime. he didn't want to go back in there as he'd already determined it was too boring, but I managed to convince him to play with the puzzles since that's a familiar toy for him (we have a whole rack of wooden peg puzzles at home). after he dumped out about three or four puzzles and ran away, i put away a couple of them, then brought him back over to help me clean up the others. its so hard to be firm but gentle, especially when you have a whole group of other moms watching you wondering why you're being so nice to your heathen child. after we put the puzzles away (and yes he did help, because he knows that's what we do when we make a mess) he went around giving gentle touches to all the other kids, who looked at him like he had an extra head. I smiled and laughed it off and told him good job for being gentle and told the other children sorry he just really likes you LOL. We were about to make our exit before things got ugly and Ms. Roz gave him a little toy dinosaur that had wheels on the bottom. he spent a good amount of time just rolling it around on the carpet (again, fixation on things that roll or spin is a sensory issue) and make some really awesome scary growling noises, then we swapped his dinosaur for a motorcycle out of the treasure box since I know that's right up his alley. I asked him if he was ready to go byebye, and then we left together, holding hands. Its interesting to me that he can seem so out of control to onlookers (which I'm now positive is due to sensory issues), but yet when I ask him to help clean up, he instantly pitches in, and when I ask him if he's ready to go byebye, he doesn't fight me, and when I tell him to hold my hand, he does so willingly, because he trusts me. I LOVE him.



Fast forward to just moments ago, getting ready to put him down for a nap, he is cranky and bored and wants to play outside during the hottest part of the day which I haven't been letting him play outside between the hours of about 11 to 3. He needed a diaper change. Now not only was he tired, and not getting his way, but I was going to be bothering him with a diaper change. I asked him several times to come here (I was in his room, then coming down the hallway) but he didn't. I told him he needed his diaper changed and he was standing in the middle of the room screaming. Knowing that naptime was imminent, I simply scooped him up and began to carry him back to his room, telling him he needed his hiney changed. He smacked me in the face, so I turned him around and held him in the bearhug so he couldn't hurt me anymore. I barely had the phrase "I know, honey, you're mad because you want to play outside" half out of my mouth before he was attempting to reach around and "gentle" touch my face.

He knows! He gets it. He hit me because he was mad, but instead of it turning into a mommy-baby brawl, he corrected himself. I validated his feelings, then we played peekaboo while I changed his dipe. THAT is the reason I am committed to peaceful parenting. Yeah it is probably the hardest thing I will ever do, but the rewards are beyond worth it. The end result makes it obvious that anything else is absolutely out of the question.