Piracy is the flavour of the month here in casa moif. Piracy and snot and the Snoos is in full swing. She has taken to watching Tom & Jerry or Winnie the pooh when ever possible but Mette is concerned that she may be watching too much TV. I'm not sure what the limit is on TV for kids or for how long they stay addicted to warm milk from a 'teet bottle', but we seem to have found a kind of status quo which is both comforting in its predictability yet annoying in the unchanging details of Freja's wayward behaviour. She does not seem to be able to sleep through the night and I'm not sure why but I think it has something to do with hunger. She often refuses to eat her afternoon meal and wakes up during the night demanding a bottle of warm milk. I'm not sure why she has this dislike of eating her dinner and it certainly doesn't happen every evening, but its frustrating to be met with her stubborn crying when ever we press her, how ever gently or firmly, to eat her food. I'm thinking maybe we should cease giving her milk at night and see if the pangs of hunger make any difference or whether I'm just being silly and things will sort themselves out naturally as she gets older. She can talk now, but its a strange hodge-podge of real words and made up words and I often find myself fumbling along in her proto syntax in order to make myself understood.
She is a wily little thing though. She understands well enough those phrases and words she wishes to understand and modifies her behaviour accordingly. She kicks up a fuss when ever something is not to her liking and although I can happily ignore her temper tantrums, Mette cannot and often the battle of female wills requires some prudent masculine intervention.
Too bad I'm as bad at prudence as I am undiplomatic.
4 comments:
Dude,
My tuppence.
Every child is different. Every parent is different. Pick your battles. There is a fine line between being overbearing and authoritative and letting the little one rule the roost and that line is very hard to walk.
Case in point: my parents never let me walk and climb all over the sofas. Neither did my wife's. My son does. After first, it was a real sticking point. However, after a while, we saw that walking up the backs and bouncing and all that gives him some much needed exercise indoors and helps his balance. When he was little, he needed some extra physical therapy to spur his development. So, in light of the fact that our furniture isn't museum quality, we now let him jump and climb and balance. It helps him and there's less muss and fuss.
Eating is very difficult. My son is getting better thanks to his feeding therapy, but he's also a lazy git (like his father (said with love)). Given a choice between eating one teeny serving of solid food or eating four bowls of infant cereal, he'd opt for the cereal. In spite of this, he is still growing like a weed, but he is thin. As both of his parents were rail thin as children, it's tough to tell if his diet is the only culprit. He certainly doesn't lack for energy, so, it's kind of a wash. Still, all that cereal doesn't offer a nutritional balance and he will eventually have to learn how to eat, so we do apply pressure.
Freya may just be lazy about eating or she may just crave the comforting routine at this point. With my son, if he was going through a developmental spurt, he'd temporarily regress in certain other areas, probably as a mental response or as a way of comfort.
Sometimes, too, they change when you don't apply any pressure. Sometimes, just quietly raising your expectations w/o making a big deal about it will bring about a needed change.
Hej Jan,
Can't see the picture, neither here or at home, could you check it?
How about now?
Feld.
Unfortunately, my own childhood is of little use as a lesson in how to raise children and we often feel at a loss in the face of Freja's odd behaviour.
I'm heartily glad to read that MF is doing so well. Thats excellent news.
Post a Comment