Are reward charts really the best way to handle toddler tantrums?

If you're a part of social networking such as Facebook you may have seen a link to this article bandied about today asking the question ''Are reward charts really the best way to handle toddler tantrums?'

My answer? No.  So lets talk about tantrums. I think first of all we have to ask ourselves what is a tantrum exactly? Regardless of what they do it is essentially a form of communication.  Through training a child not to tantrum what are we really teaching them?  We are at a very basic level invalidating what they are relaying to us.  We are taking away their voice at an age when they're lacking in the fundamental skills to adequately control and communicate in a calm and socially acceptable manner.  Regardless of the subject of their tantrum, the fact their response has escalated (not necessarily deteriorated) to a tantrum is simply testament to their passion and how invested they are in the matter. Whether we agree with their opinion or not is absolutely immaterial, their opinion no matter how impractical or in our own opinion 'wrong' is still valid and matters.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all suggesting that we should embrace tantrums or encourage them but we owe it to our children to acknowledge them, validate them, tell them we accept what they are saying/feeling (I understand you're feeling sad/angry right now because you want/don't want ....), explain to them why we're disagreeing then distract them and attempt to move on or if the tantrum has become absolutely uncontrollable, just be there.  Hold them tight if they'll let you or simply let them know where you are when they're ready for comfort or to talk about it and give them space to calm down.  It's far too easy to slip into the mindset that we as the parent know best, our opinion is what matters, we are right and they don't understand.  Of course they don't understand, it's our job to enable them, to help them understand.  With a toddler 'because I say so' really isn't at all helpful, it isn't teaching them or equipping them with understanding of why.  Taking it to a rudimentary level we are intrinsically denying them their opinion, their right of being heard and any chance of reasoning.  With rewards we are buying their co-operation and coercing them into silent obedience. 

Worse then that, we are giving them a tool to manipulate.  We are not teaching them to do something because it is perhaps practical or necessary but merely because they are rewarded for it.  If you take away the reward you risk a revolt in behavior.  

Teach don't dictate.  Enable them mentally and emotionally don't disable natural and instinctive reactions. Shaping and molding are not the same thing.

It is healthy to allow a child to question their world and that which is within it.  When we stop questioning we stop learning, to not question is to become complacent and who the hell could possibly be complacent in this world?  If we cease to question we lose our innate ability and potential to change the world.

We don't have to agree, we don't have to 'give in' but we should acknowledge and listen to what they're feeling to help both parent and child move on from a situation.

It's not epic chronicles of lentil weaving their socks whilst coddling and spoiling them, it's simply recognising them as fellow humans and helping them and ourselves become better people.

I keep telling you i'm socially inept.

It's pitch black outside and it's the witching hour, you know that time after tea yet before bath when your little darlings turn inexplicably bat shit crazy,  If they were kittens they'd be climbing the curtains, when you heard a loud pronounced knock at your front door.  You're hermits, generally it's either the postman (too late) or Jehovas Witnesses (again, usually not at night) who darken you doorstep.

Two strange things proceeded, firstly I answered the door as opposed to panicking that humans may be outside on my doorstep and squeaking for The Husband to answer it and secondly I actually opened the door when usually we just open the lounge window which is right next to it and opens right out.  

I was greeted by two young men, and I use the term loosely as they appeared on that awkward cusp between boy and man, suited and booted.  I opened the door just enough, angling my body defensively and glowered, there's no pretense it's mere instinctual I could see them recoil slightly from my baleful expression as I arched my eyebrows questioning their existence both general and specific to being on my doorstep.  The taller of the two who looked like he had some giant fist lodged up his bottom puppeting him, smiled broadly, too broadly.  It was the nervous yet rehearsed smile of someone on the make.  To be frank it was fake, and rather made him look like a Muppet.  With over exaggerated gestures he mock stepped back with an overtly friendly 'woah! don't worry we're not preaching! you looked like you were about to come out and hit us for a minute' I continued to glower, unpacified and peversly unwilling to cut him from the hook he was dangling from. He tried to crack a joke about sensing evil, I didn't laugh. His companion remained nervously quiet whilst he then launched into his spiel 'Have you heard of the PDSA?' keeping faithful to his overly familiar nauseating act. 'Yes.' Well I may be awkward to deal with but I'm certainly not rude, he asked a question so I gave him an answer yet nothing could have prepared me for the, excuse me whilst I vomit a little in my mouth, high five.  Yes, high five.  He actually high fived me.  What to do to that?  Laugh? Cast a die now please spell on him?

He continues to drivel on and asks me if I have pets to which I replied 'yes a cat and until recently a dog.  It died.' He's working double time now to keep up his enthusiastic demeanor.  Blah blah blah blathering on about what they do etc and have we used them to which I honestly replied we would have but we don't drive and our dog was dying so couldn't possibly get all the way to where they are. His feet shuffled as he momentarily lost his momentum before picking up where he left off and tried to disarm me with a joke  'we trying to raise money and looking for help doing a naked calender!' His grin was making my teeth hurt it was that saccharine 'Good luck with that' Oh the panic in his eyes as I looked to be closing the door recovering his demeanor with a quick 'ha! that's what next door said, seriously that was just a joke ' Oh really?  I hadn't guessed. It's not that I try to be dead pan it just happens 'Good for you, trust me, you really wouldn't want people round here on a naked calender' In the midst of this another high five.  Must bleach my hand.

Trying to relate to me on a personal level he asks for my name.  'Not sure, haven't chosen one yet today' They're uncomfortable and trying desperately not to let it show, good, I'm uncomfortable having random mortals bother my door.  He speaks! His companion rather awkwardly comments 'erm, that was a weird answer!' to which I blankly respond 'Nearly as weird as two males, half my age, suited and booted and knocking on my door asking my name in the dark' They try and nervously make a joke of it and try and get my name again having preciously name dropped my neighbours first name earlier on the conversation, I think i'm supposed to feel charmed by them.  I'm not. They ask again, I reiterate my previous reply and then feeling a little sorry tell them they can call me Mrs S*****.  Obviously not accustomed to formality.  Finally they pick up on the age part of my line and ask how old I think they are 'you're around 19 and your friend (mute boy) is nearer 22' they look somewhat stunned, I've obviously hit the proverbial nail close to it's head. Changing tact they profess there is no way i'm double their age. I stare, hard, at them.  'You can't be in your thirties' I arch a plucked brow 'No way! I bet you get people not believing that all the time!' Flattery gets you nowhere. 'Not really.  I don't go out. Ever. It interferes with the general evil in the house if I do' referencing their earlier evil joke.  This isn't going at all how they had planned, they really should have gone to the pub instead.  I bet wholeheartedly they agree.

Then comes the money shot.  They want money.  They break it down and do the whole 'so it's only 20p a week and it's not immediately, you can't even get a drink in the pub with that,  can we count on you?' I know what comes next, modern day charities, every bugger wants your bloody bank details.  'Maybe, who knows. I don't drink'   They try asking again with an imperceptive increase in pressure aimed at my conscience. 'Maybe' If they ask again it will be a straight out no.  Finally they accept defeat, that Muppet grin still there he pumps my hand fervently exchanging the relevant pleasantry that it was nice to meet me.

I can finally close the door, ushering The Spawn back in who'd come to gawp and interject at random points in the exchange. I can finally breath.  Needless to say I won't be answering the door again in a hurry.  I have a natural inability to act normal.

Soup Butties

Sometimes, no matter how odd the request you just have to let them get on with it because in the grand scheme of things at least they're eating something.

I have this habit of making the same soup in bulk and storing it in tupperwares in the freezer to nom upon at my leisure,  It's filling, nutritious and most importantly it's cheap.

The recipe has been adapted from my childhood.  The Mothership used to make stew with left over roast meat, usually chicken or turkey.  Mine is an oversimplified version of this.  I add plenty of red lentils, chicken stock, lots of chopped carrots and onion to the slow cooker.  Once cooked I whiz it up until it's smooth, scrumptiously thick and stir in a knob of butter.  Delicious!  Other times i'll leave it chunky with potato in it too and we'll have it with dumplings as a stew.  The Mothership often added other root vegetables such as swede and turnip and various pulses, i'm terribly allergic to vegetables,  (honest!) so don't bother.

The Toddler of all people has decided it's actually rather tasty so insists on sharing it however, he will not eat it with a spoon, only with bread to dunk.  No matter at least he's eating it however today he surpassed himself with culinary experimentation as he insisted that dunking simply wasn't good enough, now he wanted soup butties.  Yes, really.

Well, if you insist dude.

 Still, it's the closest he's come to a carrot in a while he's more of a fruit boy.

The catastrophic delight of mess.

Whilst attempting to distract Thing Two from The Wobbly Tooth (prior to it's removal) and with Thing One out on a mission with The Husband I swallowed by better judgement and decided to to messy play, for the second day in the row.  My masochism apparently has no limits.

First on todays list was to attempt bubble dough.  Easy peasy two ingredients.  You literally need cornflour and washing up liquid (or any liquid soap will do)  You squirt the soap and add cornflour combining them until you get a dough like substance.  The beauty of it is it looks gooey, only it isn't.  Tremendously strange!  It's squishy yet smooth, stretchy yet easily breaks too.  I can only liken it to bubblegum. However, in typical craft inept style, ours didn't quite appear as it did on the link, it seemed too sticky then too brittle and so we cast it aside with the vague idea of experimenting with different quantities another day.  At least it smells nice.




Feeling a trifle disappointed at that experiment, with two eager beavers expecting something fun, I held my breath and got the paints out, stood aside, thinking of Gin.  Lots of Gin. With Gin on top.

One of the problems with trying to teach The Toddler to use both sides of a sheet of paper is that it's rather difficult to then retract that rule, cue The Toddler trying to paint on both sides of the paper, although we must commend his frugal and earth friendly gesture, I can't say my twitching mentality was awfully thrilled with it.

Finding a momentary lapse in their enthusiasm, I seized the moment and ruthlessly cleared the paints away. I didn't hide the rest of the blank paper, honest.

I can only explain our final messy activity of the day as a momentary lapse in judgement, also known as temporarily being out of my bloody mind. Whatever possessed me, I do not know.

Sensory messy play with shaving foam.  Trying to be lazy and smart at the same time, I sloppily envisaged covering a roasting tray with cling film in order to minimise clean up.  I should have known this would have been utterly and totally futile.  Trust me, you really ought not to bother.  This will be messy.  Accept it.  Take your medication and remember, it will be bedtime soon.

So we filled the roasting tin with shaving foam then sprinkled food colouring onto it and let Thing Two and The Toddler have a jolly good time mixing it all up swirling the colours together through this alien substance they'd not encountered before.

That was just stage one of this stimuli.  I kidnapped some of The Toddlers dinosaurs and much to their astonishment unceremoniously dumped the unsuspecting buggers into the colourful foamy mess. The Spawn stopped, stared and contemplated just how out of my mind I had become and to exactly what depth of crazy I was inhabiting. Can you tell the poor deprived gitlings don't get to partake in spontaneous messy play often?  With trepidation at first they poked at the mess with their hands and seeing that I seem to have momentarily restrained myself and bound my better judgement they dived in with gusto relishing the sensations.  So imagine their delight when I then had the ridiculous idea of filling a bowl with water to allow them to wash the dinosaurs, turning the bowl of water into a sloppy murky foam infested mess that they could then blindly fish around for the dinosaurs only to transfer them back into the foam pit.  Oodles of fun.  It was some new kind of wonderful watching their inhibitions melt away as they became consumed by play.  I even managed not to growl or snarl (too much) when things went incredibly slippy, sploshy and splashy all over the pissing floor. Gah.  I think my palms still bare the crescent marks of my nails.

This is an activity I would definitely never ever even contemplate attempting this with all three spawn. There is simply not enough sedatives in the world to ever enable me to allow that to happen.

I think i'm safe to assume that this was indeed their favourate activity, they even found glee in being asked to take the dinosaurs to the bathroom and give them a rinse whilst I attempted to salvage the kitchen and not for the first time that day pondered taking up smoking again.

All for the bargain price of 59p for the shaving foam.

I knew my sanity was worthless, but 59p? really?

Toothgate

Thing Two had a wobbly tooth or rather she has several yet specifically one really wobbly one as in to say it's hanging on my will power alone.  She could quite literally push the ruddy thing forwards with her tongue and it would stay there.  She's only ever lost two teeth before, one was a freak trauma when she was a toddler and the other happened at school last year and despite it having been wobblesome for a terribly long time her teacher still reported to us that she was traumatised by it.  When I was a child I couldn't abide wobbly teeth, as soon as they begin to wobble i'd ruthlessly extract it, severing the very root with my nails and yanking.  Even now I lumber wobbly teeth in the same camp as feet, both ghastly and absolutely vile, vile as in the thought makes me nauseous and the sight makes me heave tremendously.

We've been subtly hinting for at least a week now that she really ought to pull the bugger out, a suggestion that was met with equal measures of horror and disdain.  Today however, enough was enough, we brought out the big guns.  It's interfering with her eating and she's been worrying her tongue on it frequently becoming increasingly perturbed by it.  The Husband issued an ultimatum seeing as she'd spent a good hour or so sulking, whimpering and crying about the blasted thing, if she didn't pull it out by bedtime; he would. Oh the terror.  Undiluted abject misery flooded her little face.

I stepped up to the mark, I offered to do it instead.  She surprised me and said yes.  Arse.  Even thinking about it causes me to be sick a little in my mouth.  Still, I did it.  I pulled the bastard tooth out and blood was shed yet not a tear.  Hoorah! Mission accomplished. So she gets a visit from the tooth fairy tonight, I do hope The Husband remembers to wear some wings and me?  I  want very much to bleach my brain.

Two Ingredient healthy breakfast cookies

Yes, you read that right. Healthy cookies with only two ingredients.

All you need is 2 bananas and 2 cups of oats.  Mash the bananas up then stir in the oats, roll into biscuit shapes/balls and plonk on a greased baking tray.  Bake at approx 180 for 15-20 minutes.

I added raisins to mine but you could add literally anything such as peanut butter, cranberries whatever takes your fancy.

I will admit to being a tad naughty on the 'healthy' part of the recipe because I added some brown sugar.  I know, I know but I never eat porridge without sugar.

The results? Well, Thing One loves the,.  Thing Two unfortunately didn't, The Toddler can't be convinced to even try them and me?  Did I mention the fact I am disgusted by bananas?  I really do find them utterly revolting.

Still, handy to have a super quick and easy recipe for something they'll view as a treat, yet you know exactly what's gone into it.  All natural, full of energy and super healthy.

Shopping Rage.

Usually shopping day is Tuesday, every week.  Things One & Two are usually firmly ensconced in school and The Fathership usually takes myself, The Husband and The Toddler to the shops seeing as we don't drive and feeding the Party of Five is no small shopping jaunt.  It sounds awfully kind of him and believe me we are terribly grateful yet lets just say being in a car with Daddy Dearest is an ... experience. However, The Fathership is in Spain for a few weeks and The Spawn are currently diminishing our sanity at home for The Easter Holidays, I wasn't exactly relishing the idea of us all descending en masse to the poky supermarket, granted we frequently do mid week top ups there but a full shop?  I generally don't think I could survive it, or should I say I might but it's doubtful they would.

So, it was decided The Boys would stay at home with The Husband and I'd take Thing Two with me.  It's not often I leave the house sans The Husband and even less often sans The Toddler, yet occasionally I get a random burst of confidence and seize it.  We walked the 0.8 miles there with the flutters of snow tickling the earth around us, gloved hands in hands as  we chatted away with wind slapped cheeks glowing.  In order to get to the cash machine you have to go into the shop, then go as if to exit fighting past the queues then exit totally to get a trolley and start again.  Obviously the ATM only issues notes whereas the trolleys only accept pound coins, you can see where this is going can't you?  Not to worry, I had a plan.  I'd buy some appallingly overpriced confectionery to get some change, or at least I would if I didn't have to queue up miles to buy one item that I don't even necessarily want and definitely don't need just so I can get some change to get a trolley to then go back round the shop.  Madness.  Never Fear, those self service tills of doom loomed near.  As a general rule we never ever use them, firstly we believe they're replacing jobs that good old fashioned humans could and should be doing for a wage and secondly they always fuck up so you need a human intervention from staff anyway.  Pointless awful contraptions.  Could you believe I even had to queue up to use one of those?  You know, to use something I disagree with to buy something I don't  actually want.  I hadn't even started the shopping and my blood pressure was already bubbling dangerously high.  I swear I nearly mauled the man in front of me, too busy chatting on his phone to actually see it was his turn.

  Do I have my own bag it asks?  For a pack of soothers? Erm, yes, okay.  Only once i'd scanned them The Machine took offence at the fact I didn't actually have a bag and was quite insistent that I must present it upon the bag area.   Oh give me strength. Fine, I petulantly plonked my handbag upon it.  There, you insufferable machine, a bag.  However, this bag is too heavy apparently.  I have an obese bag. It was being rejected how humiliating for my poor bag.  So now that little light starts flashing like a mute police car whilst the screen politely informs me assistance is on the way.  On the way from where exactly it chose not to disclose, I'm of the opinion Paraguay judging by the time it took. For the love of all that's unholy. So, she saunters up does some random witchcraft with a card thing and then wanders off. Great.  Dandy. I frantically try and locate where exactly i'm suppose to feed my twenty pound note, this being the only day in the week that I actually possess money of the paper variety, and place it there.  Nothing happens. Spiffing.  Super. I'm positively growling at this point, relatively close to phasing into some rabid werewolf and trashing the whole bastard shop. Eat it you ghastly contraption. I try shoving it into it's bestilled gob.  Success! Aha!

Only, I get outside and go to pluck a pound coin from my change so that I could finally get a damn trolley only to see it had given me notes and TWO £2 coins.  Yes, really.  You couldn't have scripted it better. I'm relatively sure I turned a shade of vicious puce and started hopping about on the spot looking for something to kick, hard, before I killed someone or worse cried. Thankfully some kind woman noted my imminent breakdown and asked if i'd rather like some change from her.

At last.  A trolley.  I can now actually start shopping, pissing joy!  Thankfully the rest of the shopping there was uneventful, I really should receive a tremendously large amount of credit for not killing anybody, if only you knew the sheer force of will it took.  You'd be terribly impressed or at least you should be.

Only it wasn't over yet,  I now had to go next door.  With baleful determination I swung the trolley into gear and commenced.  Bliss, my biggest problem was deciding which hair dye to purchase.  Nothing lasts though does it?  I finally get to be served and the cashier decides that now is evidently the perfect time to stop and write out painstakingly slowly the message she wishes to relay vocally over the public address system.  Of course now is the perfect time she couldn't possibly have done it before serving the customer in front of me nor the one behind me.  Why me? My eyes linger over the alcohol section behind me as I begin to question the need for food, surely The Spawn can eat carpet fluff for a week whilst I fill a trolley with alcohol, right? It's times like this I wished I still smoked.

I call for a taxi whilst waiting outside only to realise they hung up without taking my name, this should be interesting seeing as usually several people are all waiting for a taxi.

This is when the day turned around.  This is the moment that literally saved the local residents from my wrath and a  a psychopathic homicidal rampage.  A taxi pulled up, my taxi and rather then totally ignore the passenger as they usually do the lovely driver got out of his car and started putting my shopping in the boot for me saying he'd do it and I could just leave him to it.  Bless.  What a trooper.  Not wanting to take the piss, I stayed put and did the  job together.  The taxi fare is actually cheaper then the bus, so I gave him a healthy tip, not healthy as in actual amount but healthy as in compared to what the actual fare was.  He looked bashful and confused, I explained it's because he helped me rather then the usual drivers who seem oblivious to someone struggling.  He looked genuinely confused as if the act of not helping was alien to him then the absolute darling despite my protests of it being unnecessary actually insisted on carrying my shopping down the path and steps to my door for me.  I could have kissed him! It only takes an act of human kindness to save a potential massacre of random people. Well, for today at least.  I can't promise they'll be safe tomorrow.