Saturday, November 17, 2007

Then Again, Apparently I'm Clueless

Did I say yesterday that warm milk was the key to calm children?

HA!

Even with a splash of eggnog and extra cinnamon in her milk, Napoleona was a pill today. She seems to be going through a particularly bratty stage, and I haven't yet found the key to helping her through it.

The worst part is that we've often done a divide-and-conquer manoeuver on the weekends, where Anthropapa will go run errands with SillyBilly, while Napoleona and I have a quiet morning at home. She'll play nicely while I putter around the house.

To be fair, she did play nicely for about a half hour while I cleaned off my desk. Then after snacktime she just seemed to go off the deep end a bit. Using rude words, saying No! to everything, being extremely silly and not attending to anything I'm saying, and so on. I couldn't even get her to settle down to put on her shoes to play outside!

Personally, I think the idea of "terrible twos" is completely off base. Both of my kids have been much worse behaved at three than at two. Even their daycare provider told me that Napoleona's been having trouble sharing and playing nicely, in contrast to earlier in the year when she was the inspiration for lots of nice creative play.

In the Waldorf world, we talk about how a child under three years is still closely bound to the mother, not just emotionally but on the etheric level. At three the child begins to have awareness of being a separate person, and indeed the child's etheric body begins to separate from the mother's and becomes more focused on the child alone.

In theory, this would explain some of the behavioral issues of this age, and why many people consider four-year-olds to be wonderful!

But enough of my parenting woes. Instead, I'll (hopefully) amuse you with a picture of Anthromama in the early years. Please note that the pudding smears would explain the root of my inordinate love of chocolate, and my subsequent, shall we say, zaftigness.


Thank you Grandma Mimi for your old printer/scanner!
If this turns into a blog of old baby photos, it's all your fault.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might try accompanying the warm
milk-eggnog-cream concoction with some soothing classical music and
lavendar scent.

A calming combination for a variety of senses.

Nana

Henitsirk said...

Nana: I might, if I could catch her and make her sit still long enough!

Anonymous said...

Wah, please don't tell me three is worse than two. I am finding two such a tough stage and it's not even his birthday until next week! Then again, the Kikorator seems to already see himself as a separate little person whose job in life is to provoke as many reactions as possible from Mammy. I can also relate strongly to not being able to catch them and make them sit still!! I used to worry when Kiko asked to watch TV. No worries about that now. No way will he sit down and watch it, which I suppose is the plus side of all this activity!

Charlotte said...

I've also found three a more challenging age than two. We are just coming out of three difficult years with Daisy (who is about to turn six), where she always knew better than us about everything. Dawdling in order to get everyone's attention played a big factor in her repertoire.

I love the photo, your grin, the chocolate smears and that fabulous black and white sofa. I want it!

healingmagichands said...

Cinnamon is a stimulant. Maybe you should try some nice vanilla instead. Don' replace the cinnamon with nutmeg or allspice either, they are stimulants also.

It sounds like quite a circus around your place. Get yourself some nice chamomile tea, and tell yourself "This too shall pass." You already know the answer, you wrote it in this post. Eventually she will separate her etheric body from you, start to feel more secure in her separateness and things will calm down again.

Meanwhile, the key is for you to not go stark raving mad during the process. Take deep breaths. Go get a massage. Remind yourself that you love her.

Perhaps you could even do some meditation and visualize gently releasing her etheric body to her, even sending some of her energy to her, as much as she can absorb comfortably. That also might help move the change along, facilitate things.

Henitsirk said...

HMH: Those are wonderful suggestions (I forgot about cinnamon). Things have calmed down considerably just from us parents getting more sleep and my focus on staying calm. We've also decided to give a lot less attention to the "negative" behaviors, which seems to be helping as well.

Deep breaths all around.