plan_survive | Recent Entries

My son is 23 months. I realise this is very little still, but is there anything we can do to encourage slightly more independent play?

We're in the lead-up to a house-move and some of this involves packing while he's awake. His reaction to this is to cry and try and attract our attention and when that fails he starts unpacking things and throwing them. We're also starting to both start to get really grumpy and defensive, introvert-style, from spending all our waking hours with a sad two-year old seemingly insatiably wanting super-happy toddler parenting.

What we'd like is for him to do something by himself. In the same room is fine, just I'd like to be able to avert my eyes and occupy my hands productively. Does anyone know how to encourage this?

Some notes:
- he's only just verbal, so there's no way we can have a sentence-type discussion of how he's feeling. His vocabulary is still name-things-with-concretes-noun-only (so "dog!" or "book!" not "I am feeling lonely!" or "please play with me again Mummy!" or "I don't like that toy!")
- we do not have local family or friends, this is a big part of why we're moving
- we have not in the past found that less-local family or friends are dying to help out. Per my last post, we don't have a lot of parent-friends so to use free babysitting, I need to hang around and actively teach toddler-care from scratch at which point I may as well do it myself: I certainly won't be packing up my house while this happens.
- paid childcare is difficult and expensive to access: it's the Australian summer and peak holiday season, it's the centre shutdown week, and we have enough trouble affording the care we use when we are both actively earning money at the same time: care in our area runs to $25 an hour or so.

puzzlement

Does anyone else feel the stress of having the only child/being the only parent in view?

I feel this a lot with my friends, and all the time with my family: I am the eldest sibling and cousin, and much younger than all my uncles and aunts. (My husband is similar in a way: his sisters are childless and he rarely sees his cousins.) So at many gatherings there is exactly one child, our son, and one or two parents, us. It feels like parenting on stage. I find it very hard. Of course many older relatives remember parenting young children, but it's a little bit removed: I'm the only one who has to right then and there calm down a child screaming because either they're getting too much attention (eight adults all exhorting him to rock on his lovely new rocking horse) or too little (eight adults have suddenly switched their attention in unison to admiring someone's new earrings).

It also means that for days on end, he has two playmates, and they are us. Family gatherings are the opposite of the tribe-of-children experience they are in some families. (And I feel a bit bad for him as well, I hated being the old cousin too old for the tribe and too young for the adults, and he will have an even worse gap because at least I have a sister close in age.)

I don't know that I'm looking for advice (I can't imagine what it would be: casting fertility spells on our sisters?), but maybe commiseration!

puzzlement

You can give me advice, but also, feel free to chat about seasonal present shopping and choices, if they are coming up for you. I'm happy to host an open-ish present thread, I don't urgently need advice.

My situation:

V is 21 months old, will be 23 months at Christmas. Not totally sure what to get him! (And his birthday is less than a month later.) Some things about him:
1. he's still pre/early-language explosion, probably has about 100 words, no sentences
2. he is very active, likes to run and play in water
3. he loves music and dancing
4. we live in a walk-up apartment with little storage space

Some things we are thinking of getting:

A balance bike. Is he too young to figure out how it works any time soon though?

Some kind of play tent something. He loves to hide in child-size "houses" (tents, cubbies) and leap out laughing. It would need to be collapsible.

Very bouncy balls.

Books. Anyone got any young toddler book recommendations? He loves rhymes a heap, also repetition, board book pages that he can turn himself without scrunching them up. (Very toddler, in other words.) Things with plots he shows no sign of following at all. His favourite things are planes, trains, dogs, giraffes, balls, birds (especialy pigeons) and family.

Music. We have They Might Be Giants kids albums but not other kid stuff. Maybe that's OK. He is liking David Bowie right now. But on the other hand, during the year he will presumably make his big language leap into complex sentences and might enjoy things with lyrics that he understands and can sing along to.

puzzlement

How do you teach a toddler not to touch certain body parts of yours?

Specifically, my toddler needs to never touch my neck again. I'm one of those people (it's not uncommon) who is a bit panicky about any pressure on my neck, and the sequence of him snuggling into my neck (or trying to put his crawling weight on it) in bed and then me yelling and him screaming in fright needs to end.

For reference, he's 20 months old. He is not yet very verbal (vocab of 20 to 30 words, no sentences). We've been saying "no neck, no neck" to him and moving him for at least 14 months or so, ever since he started to crawl. Now that he's a lot heavier, unfortunately I go straight into a "ohmigod going to die" reaction and don't have a lot of access to "darling, Mama feels like she is going to die when you do that, please do not do it, thank you."

puzzlement

My son is 19 months old and still breastfeeds a lot, anything up to 20 times in 24 hours, most commonly 8–12 times. And this is now too much for me. I don't want to finish weaning him, but I want to reduce feeding. And I want feeds to so often stop ending in one of us howling, either him because I was firm and didn't let him have an hour long on-and-off welcome-to-the-new-day feed, or me because he's dry-nursing and I feel like my skin is being flipped inside out and gently and horribly tickled. It's almost impossible to avoid shouting when I feel like that, because I'm just barely suppressing an urge to push him away and run instead.

He's eating relatively well, and we use daycare 3 days a week (soon, unfortunately, 4, while I finish my PhD, 4 is past my personal desire to be apart from him) so he's also used to extended periods without nursing, just not with me around as well.

So, specific question: what kind of favourite thing did your toddler take to after breastfeeding, be it toy or activity or game? Because nursing is for sure his favourite thing: it comforts him, amuses him, and gives him something to do when bored or shy. I don't mind at all nursing after a fall or hurt, or in fact for reunions and bonding. But I do mind boredom nursing a lot and the shyness thing (he's about middle of the road for a child his age I think, so shy-ish) is leading to a lot of public nursing requests. Again not totally averse, but I could have lived without being "that woman who gave the keynote address and had that perma-attached baby" at the tech conference on the weekend, frankly.

He does of course like other things, but unfortunately the two other activities he adores are bathtime and playgrounds. I don't want to transition him to 8–12 baths or playground visits a day, so it would be nice to find or help him find a substitute that's a little less energy intensive for me.

puzzlement

My 17mo son is hurting us a lot. Suggestions on how to get him to stop?

I've seen various advice on how to stop toddlers hitting and biting and hair pulling, but a lot of it weirdly seems to assume that they don't do it enough to hurt yet. He hurts us a lot; it is excruciating. Enough that it's really hard to get it together to be very calm and controlled and gentle. I can't get out "we don't pull people's hair darling because it hurts them and we don't like to hurt people" while he's got a good clump of my hair and is pulling a substantial fraction of his weight against it, or he's just slapped my husband's face hard enough to make him yell in surprise.

So, what do we do?

Some more details: this is associated with silly attention getting moods. He shows some signs of being sad when we're sad, but not in this mood. He also doesn't show any sign of being distressed by yelling when in this mood, and in any case we'd obviously like to keep yelling to a minimum rather than escalating into the Yell A Lot House.

He has some behaviour that seems sensory-seeking but harmless in these moods: shaking his head fast and waggling his body and making jerky "aaa aaa aaa aaa" chants and so on. I haven't done any reading on sensory-seeking stuff yet, so elementary tips on that would be useful. (Nothing that involves sand or things he can tip on the carpet yet though, no impulse control in that area.)

It's a really record rainy winter here and we live in an apartment in a building with no safe common areas (all slippery tiles and ornamental gardens opening unfenced onto a busy road), so, that isn't helping. I try and give him 1 hour of playground time every day but he still seems pretty stir-crazy.

Current Mood: awake

puzzlement

My 15mo's appetite has decreased substantially in the last month. Really substantially: I guess his food consumption at less than a third of what it was at 13 months old. A typical day is:

Breakfast: 1/4 to 1/2 Weetbix brick with dairy milk
Lunch: About 4 bites of an English muffin with peanut butter
Dinner: About 4 bites of an English muffin with peanut butter

(He's also been refusing nearly all meat, fruit and vegetables for the last month. He has substantially increased nursing frequency and my milk supply appears to have risen a fair bit judging purely by feel, so while his appetite is down, it's not down as much as his food consumption.)

I'd like to try that common suggestion of having a snack tray out for him, but... I don't see how it works! He'd just turn the muffin tray upside down, tip all the food out, and use the muffin tray to try and hammer the food into the table and into the carpet*. The only solution we've found to date to throwing/smooshing/playing with food is removing all food from his vicinity.

Is this just something people put up with? Or is the muffin tray with high calorie snacks something for slightly older toddlers? Or am I missing something?

* Just in case anyone is wondering: no, there are no uncarpeted areas we can have him play/eat. The kitchen and the bathroom aren't safe for him, and both would require an actual renovation to become safe.

puzzlement

V is close to 15 months old. His number of night feeds and wakings vary from 1 to about 6. (I suspect the "underlying" number is 1 to 2, but he's been teething for about 6 weeks now with his first set of molars so... lately more 2 to 4.)

It could be worse as he almost always resettles extremely well after being fed, but even so, we need more sleep now, especially as I find it difficult to resettle myself if woken after 4:30am. I could probably do one night feed for the rest of my life, but anything more than that isn't ideal.

What usually happens at this point of the story is that the mother says "and I can tell he isn't hungry in the night, so that's OK." But... actually he does seem hungry to me, at least for most of the wakings. Occasionally there's a waking where he's more "phew, Mum still exists, all is right with the world" but many of his night feeds are voracious.

( Our setup )

So, given that I think there's a mixture of nursing-for-nutrition and nursing-for-comfort going on, what do you think we should do about night weaning, or reducing his night wakings?

puzzlement

Is anyone aware of an umbrella-fold stroller for sale anywhere in the world for less than USD200 new that has height-adjustable handles? (I'm not committing to buying at that price, I just want to know what's out there.)

Most of the discussions I see on this end in "nope, your lucky DH will never have to push the stroller!" I have a husband as it happens, but this solution doesn't work for us. I am 193cm (6'4") tall. Even among huge car boot eating prams, we only found one I could push without stooping. I'd love an umbrella stroller too, but... I'm yet to find one other than the $$$ Maclaren one that is height adjustable at all, let alone to my height.

puzzlement

I thought we had this mostly solved. But no.

V is 13 months old. He is still breastfed several times a day. He was offered solids from 6 months old but until about 9 months old, he really didn't do what you'd call eating. Since then he's reasonably steadily consumed both more food and a wider variety. So far so good.

Until this week. Last weekend he vomited a couple of times and had diarrhoea. (Later in the week my husband and I developed this too, simultaneously. And our car broke down the same day in sympathy.) And now he appears superficially well, but he won't eat. We're back at the "lick a cracker" level of solid food intake that corresponded with him being about 7mo. He seems hungry: he is breastfeeding many times a day, and up to six times at night (up from a usual two). With my own illness, and a supply now adapted to a partially-breastfed solids eater rather than an exclusively breastfeeding baby, I am not meeting his demand. He is taking ages and ages to go to sleep at night, I suspect from hunger. He is in a poor mood a lot of the time.

We offer him plenty of food. He picks it up and drops it on the ground, or pushes it away and cries. My husband wonders if it's simply that he's taking a long time to feel good again. (My husband himself usually cannot eat more than 1 meal a day for a full week after vomiting stops.) Which would be fine (if sad) except that he seems to be actually hungry but not willing to eat.

One good thing: in addition to breast milk, he is taking water well and does not show any signs of dehydration that I am aware of.

Did anyone else have trouble getting a toddler to eat well again, post-illness? What did you do?

To answer some questions from last time my family was sick: our closest family lives about an hour away and most considerably further than that, and our parents are either still working full time or unable to travel. This is largely also true of our friends. None of them are willing to risk the pretty much inevitable acute illness that gastro entails in any case. So, no, there is no one who will drop in and give us a bit of a break.

puzzlement

My husband A is about to go away for two weeks of work travel. V (11.5 months old) and I are not accompanying him.

My mother insists that V will entirely forget his father within days, and that we should if anything encourage this process, that V will find phone calls, video Skype, pictures of his father upsetting. (She is basing this off her experience of leaving me alone at the same age: I was weaned about about 10 months old and soon after that she had a week-long holiday without me.)

To make things worse, there will be considerable other unavoidable disruption of V's surroundings at the same time. V and I are going to stay with my parents for the two weeks that A is away, and then when A returns, he, V and I are all immediately going away together for a week during which I will be working, and A will be V's primary carer (although V and I will see each other multiple times each day, so not the same thing).

For anyone else who has had a parent-child separation of about this length, did you find that the baby entirely forgot the parent? Is total erasure of his father the way to go here and if not, what level of contact did you have and did it work out? And how did the reunion go?

puzzlement

As of today, he's completely refusing to drink EBM at all. (And it was fresh, not thawed.)

I know he could change his mind again, but I think I remember that various people reported that their child started refusing EBM at about this age (9 months). There's no especial problem with this is there? He had a long nurse when I picked him up but nothing out of the ordinary, and a bigger than usual dinner. I'm not sure our daycare centre will be thrilled with "give him water", they do expect under 2s to be supplied with milk drinks.

puzzlement

V is 9.5 months old and goes to group daycare 2 days a week.

At home, he still does a lot of breastfeeding although his food intake is steadily increasing. (See a typical day here.) At the centre I think he takes somewhat more food than he does at home: they spoon feed and at home he eats finger foods.

During the daycare periods, I still pump three times and get at least 450mL (15oz) and 550mL (18.5oz) is not unheard of, and this is without the really rigorous style of pumping: I stop as soon as the flow has really dropped rather than wringing every last drop out. I definitely can not stop pumping entirely: I need at least two pumping sessions or it gets painful.

But he no longer consumes anything like 450mL when he is at daycare. 200mL is more typical. He doesn't really make it up at night on those nights either, I think the solids they give him are substituting. (I have no idea what his intake when we're together is like, but it probably is similar to what I pump.)

I realise that this is something of an anti-problem but it makes me sad to throw out that much milk (as we have to if it is thawed) and soon we are going to run out of room in our freezer if my supply keeps exceeding demand.

What do you think? Should I pump less? Actively encourage my supply to drop (somehow)?

There are no milk banks that accept donations from a woman in Sydney, NSW. I cannot donate the milk. (And even if there were, milk banks in Australia seem to prefer donations from women whose child is under 6 months of age.)

rmc28

(Cross-posted to my journal)

Charles has just finished his 4th week of nursery and seems to be settling in ok. He's making some friends and talking about them by name, but sadly he is also getting occasional physical attacks from other children: biting, pinching, hitting. The nursery takes it fairly seriously, so I know about it because I get told about it each day something happens, and sign a form to say I've been told. (The parents of the child doing the violence get a different form to sign too, I gather.) The nursery policy is that staff can't tell me who the assailants are, but Charles tells me anyway when talking about it, so I know that it's limited to two boys, and it's always a result of disputes over favoured toys.

I am wrestling with angry mama-bear "so this is what people mean by nursery-will-teach-social-skills is it?" and not wanting to overreact (it is relatively minor stuff, it's taken seriously and stopped asap by the staff, he is building friendships there too). But I feel a need to do more to ensure Charles doesn't think minor violence every few days is ok or to be tolerated, and to give him non-violent tools to handle it.

After yet another incident on Friday, yesterday morning I talked with Charles a bit about saying loudly and firmly "No! Don't pinch me! That hurts!" and similar for biting, etc. Charles turned this into a game where his toys bit/pinched/hit me and I protested loudly and he came and stopped them, and then they bit/hit/pinched him and he protested loudly and I came and stopped them. He played the game much later in the day too, when Tony was around and could join in too. (In passing, I find it really interesting how his instinctive response is to turn tricky things like this into games to practice/play out the new concept.)

We talked about how if he speaks out loudly then the nursery staff, or other people around him, will know what is happening and can come and help. We talked a bit about maybe walking away from people who are hurting him, and how he doesn't have to play with them or be their friend. And I emphasised that it's absolutely not ok to hit/pinch/bite back (at least he hasn't done so yet - a small bit of pride I can take from the situation).

Is this enough? Too much? I think the setup at the nursery is such that this will be positive, and give the staff more warning when stuff is happening. I also hope that the loud "no, don't bite me" might just have a direct effect on the attacking child.

Suggestions/comments/experience welcome.

puzzlement

I have a long running case of gastroenteritis (will see a doctor when it's Monday). This appears, probably understandably, to have affected my milk supply.

It doesn't seem to be too bad, as in the baby is happy during the day and not himself showing signs of dehydration. He's 9 months old and will finally reliably accept food so he also has some alternative sources of nutrition.

But it's making nighttimes hellish, and of course, this is on top of me being pretty sick myself. He usually peacefully nurses to sleep both at bedtime and after all nighttime feeds. But it seems there isn't enough milk for him at the moment. He suckles fast and firmly for ages. He has both sides offered twice or three times. Some nights we're having to break him off and let him scream himself (in someone's arms) to sleep because I'm too sick to spend such a huge amount of time feeding him, and, frankly, after an hour of tug-tug-tug-tug-tug on my nipples I do go a bit mad. He then wakes a lot in the night, feeds for a long time and is difficult to resettle then too. (He doesn't seem especially unhappy though, he seems... over happy? Very excited and squealy.)

It's a really raw deal that my being sick causes him to sleep badly and then make me sicker, too.

Is there something I can do? I am reluctant to supplement much at all because I figure with the damage this has apparently done to my supply, the last thing I need is to add a decrease in demand too due to supplementation. That change might be the kind of milk supply change that brings on a nursing strike or a permanent change in our feeding unnecessarily.

I'm staying as well-hydrated as I can, I think.

puzzlement

I'd appreciate people's general thoughts on the issue of babies, children, sleep deprivation and family schedules.

This is inspired by a casual mention else-journal of a chronically sleep deprived one year old. I'd really like my poor baby (currently 8 months old) to get the sleep his body wants to do, but with adult jobs and baby daycare it's increasingly likely that sometimes we are going to wake him well before he would wake himself. (For the last few months he's tended to have a sleep in in the morning, at least by baby standards.)

We haven't even solved this problem for his father yet, who needs an alarm to be awake by 10am. (I'm the kind of person who quickly trains to be awake 2 minutes before the alarm, or 2 minutes before the baby, I have no idea what my natural waking even is. I have the morning-person pattern of a very regular bedtime instead.)

ailbhe

I have mildish flu. My five-year-old has a temperature and a cough and is on Tamiflu, and the almost-three-year-old developed a cough just about an hour after the older child's Tamiflu prescription was brought in. Everyone has the dire rear.

Somehow, I'm ok until the children need medicine on prescription or treatment outside the home. Then I feel like I've failed them by allowing them to need, er, something I can't magically provide with my mother nature hippie knitting skills, or something.

And my own illness isn't helping.

I hate households full of ill people.

Profile

Plan: Survive

December 2011

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style:: timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 28th, 2012 08:31 pm

Plan: Survive

Recent Entries

Independant play and the 2yo

Only child syndrome

Gifting chat

Banned body parts

Limited breastfeeding

When babies hurt

Nibble tray: hopefully an easy question

Nightweaning

Umbrella stroller for tall people

Getting my son to eat food again

Separation and a secondary caregiver

Update on the milk situation

Wasting milk

Tools for handling violence from other children

Temporary(?) supply problems and the annoyed baby

Waking a sleeping baby...

Yet Another Failure As a Parent Moment

Profile

December 2011

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags