Tonight, Brian (my youngest of two and a half years old) was postponing bed for about 15 mins with all kinds of futile ideas.

I said, “Come lets go to bed Brian!”
“NO! I don't want to go to bed.” He was clearly upset, his foot stomping down and looking at me very determined.
I tried a different tactic by showing him I wanted to understand. I said "So it sounds like you don't want to go to bed now?"
“No!”

I said to him that I would love to take him to bed now and I would like to know what I could do to take him to bed without him crying?

Surprisingly, he just said, “Ok we can go now”. I could not believe this. It is as though my just showing him that I had wanted to understand was the puzzle that unlocked him. YES!

On Sunday morning we were watching an old DVD of the girls’ school play which is based on the music from Mama Mia.

Margaret - Dad I really want to be a queen bee like Jane in the school play. (she said this with a very whiny tone)
Dad,- so you really would like to be the queen bee?
Margaret- Yes and I want the special wings and crown. I am only a ballet bee. It's not fair.
Dad – Hmm, I see. (I was feeling I a bit nervous here, not sure what was going to happen. Was my acknowledgement of her emotions encouraging her to get upset?)
Margaret- She has a beautiful dress. Can you get me one? I WANT the crown the wings and dress. Get me every thing!
Dad- So you really want to be a queen bee. Hmm. I am sure there will be another opportunity for you to be the queen bee in the next play, and when it comes along, let’s make sure you can put on all the wings and the clothes of the queen bee.
Margaret- Yes, please can we watch Mama Mia again now?

I was surprised by this as I thought  she was going to keep persisting that I get everything now. But it didn’t seem that was needed.

After week one of the course, Lana was eating breakfast and started complaining that her breakfast was not sweet enough, not enough sugar in, this is a constant argument between us. One I normally respond to her with denial that it is sweet enough and I have put more than enough in and the battle persists for awhile.

This particular time she started complaining, I went to sit with her and said is it really not sweet enough? No dad, it’s just that all the sugar is on the bottom, I asked her if I could stir it for her, her reply was, yes please. Which I did and to my amazement was now fine and sweet enough.

After the week 2 of the course -We had gone away for the night, I had sorted macaroni cheese for Lana’s supper. After a activity filled day we settled down for supper. I dished up for her and all was cosy…..Dad can I please have some tomato sauce?

Oops. She always has tomato sauce with macaroni cheese. I checked to see if there was any in the cupboards…no luck. I took a moment, and would have handled it completely differently before our last workshop. I told here there was nothing in the cupboards.

I sat with her and said in graphic detail, I wish I could take 100 of the largest tomatoes and cook them in a massive pot and make all this tomato sauce. I would make this awesome tomato sauce and package it into little bags and take some where ever we went and we would never run out.

She contributed to the story a bit and then surprisingly said its fine, and started eating with no more complaints. I was pleasantly surprised. The next morning we woke up early and got ready for a walk.

Lana was walking in the middle between myself and Cathy. She wanted us to swing her, we had just started the walk and I knew it wouldn’t just be 2 swings. So I thought let me give this fantasy skill another try, even though the situation didn’t really call for it.

I said, I wish I could swing back and forwards to get real power and swing her in one big swing all the way to the moon ,which was visible in front of us. And she would land on the moon, she could wave at us from the moon and tell us all about the moon ,and I would wave back.

She added to the story telling us what she would do on the moon. And that was that, she didn’t ask again.

This morning, we were about to leave for school and running very late. I picked up Brian's bottle from on the couch (he’s two and a half years old). It had a little tiny bit of milk left in it so I poured it out and started washing the bottle.

He was super upset and couldn’t think why he was going to be so upset about such a small thing. He cried loud with real tears all the way to the car "I want my lait-lait" "I want my lait-lait"(lait is French for milk). I acknowledged his feelings by saying "So you really want your lait-lait, hey Brian?"

"Yes I want my lait-lait" crying and crying, I did not know what else to do, I could not understand why he was so upset. I was trying to find a reason, a logic, he looked so sad.

I picked him up and hugged him and said "I am so sorry Brian I thought you didn't want any more because you left it on the couch and when you leave it on the couch for me it means that you are finished with it."

He was still crying "I want my lait-lait" but was calming down a bit. I said "Oh! Brian wants his lait-lait badly now. He really wants that bottle to be filled with lait-lait." I was just holding him and saying these things to him. 

Then I told him "It does not matter so much Brian, I've got an idea, when we come back from school, I'll make you a big lait-lait, ok? Would you like that?"

"Yes mom". He had calmed down radically. Amazing! Yay!

The watch that Luca had been given came with these red rectangular sheets of paper.  Luca had lost his and could not find them. This was around home time and he was tired and he lost the plot. I eventually found one sheet (white and red speckled on one side with plain white on the back).

But it got bad and the crying hysterical. I again decided I know I can handle this differently. My father was saying the usual, ‘Come Luca, stop crying like a baby, that is enough now.. blah blah", you know the usual way we handle things.  I told my dad that saying things like that would not help right now and said goodbye and we left. 

In the car, Luca was crying and crying. Instead of doing as my dad did, which we are all guilty of, I asked him instead, ‘What are those papers for Luca?” He told me, between breaths of despair, that they are for writing down messages to your friends and then you drop them on their doorsteps of their houses. 

I continued to ask more, so what sort of messages would he write and to who and so on and so on.  He chatted away, getting less upset, talking about it.  I eventually said, "geez, you are really upset that you lost them hey?" 

He said he was and he really wanted to have them back.  So I suggested that I go to the copy shop the next day and get some new ones cut out the same size.  He then rattled off all the instructions to me.. it must be red and white speckled on the one side mom, and plain white on the other, and the exact same size.. blah blah.  And when will you have them mom… By the time I finish school etc etc. 

I went and got them cut for him later that afternoon and he has them kept in a special bank packet ever since and THAT IS THE END OF THAT STORY!

Isn’t that great!

We went to family dinner. Family had arrived from London bearing gifts. Charmaine bought presents for the boys, but only having an 8 month old herself, she did not know what to buy the cousins here.

She bought the older 2 cousins (Luca and Devon – age 6.5 years old) these battle watches with all these functions and they were a great hit. So much so that Neil (age nearly 4) was devastated he didn’t get one. His robot t-shirt paled in comparison.

He was beside himself, going on and on about the watch and crying and really making me feel very embarrassed. I apologized to Charmaine who was apologizing profusely for creating the situation in the first place. I consciously decided I needed to do something different – dissolve/dilute the situation.

I asked my dad for a pen, sheet of paper and cello-tape. I called Neil and said I was going to draw him a watch that looked just like the ones Luca and Devon had. I called Luca with his watch and I copied the watch as best I could. Neil was intrigued and watched with glee.

I got the cello-tape and I taped the watch to his wrist and told him that his watch could do everything that Luca and Devon’s could. I added the final touch by saying, “and please, Neil, use this watch carefully and do not blow us all up!”

He was so happy, he ran off to play with the other kids using his watch just as they were. I was so chuffed it worked, I glowed with satisfaction at my newly used skill.

I am writing about an example this week which I succeeded in because I was totally amazed. My husband told my kids that we could all go for a bicycle ride in the road – they spent 5 minutes getting dressed with jackets and shoes etc.

Eventually when they stepped out into the road it started bucketing down with rain. My 2 year old son was devastated and really started crying a lot. I started telling him it was raining and he could not go out into rain and ride and get wet. But he was NOT going to stop crying as I could see as he was REALLY disappointed.

So I tried the whole fantasy thing! I said to him, Robert, if you did go riding outside now, would you go up the hill or down the hill first (as we live on middle of hill) – he immediately answered me, “up the hill,” he paused and said, “then Susan and I would race down the hill, and daddy would not know which of us to catch first”……by now he had totally stopped crying and was so interested in telling me about the ride he was going to have!

And that was that – the crying stopped immediately and the incident was over! I was absolutely stunned and delighted !

Jason had been sick for a couple of days and had been off school. I told him that he was returning to school the next day, and he said that he didn’t want to go to school. I humoured him, and the conversation went like this:

Me: “but you wouldn’t want to miss playball tomorrow would you?”

Jason “ Oh No – I love playball.”

Me: “ Okay, we will tell your teacher that you are just coming to school for playball, and then you will come home again. But what about show and tell, are you happy to miss that?”

Jason “ Oh no, I want to go to show and tell – and playball, but come home for the other things.”

Me: “ Okay, just for playball, and show and tell, but what about story time?”

And so the conversation continued, until he wanted to be there for everything except for snack time – he decided he would pop home for snack time. We then decided that if he had something fun in his lunchbox it would also definitely be worth staying for that too. It really was a fun conversation, and Jason was laughing and very engaged as he felt very empowered.

It was a great way for him to realise that he in fact loved school, and I didn’t have to do any persuading!

Liam caught his finger in a lid of a Tupperware, and started to whine. Rather than dismissing him, I asked him lots of questions about the pain, one of which was whether it felt like a crab had pinched him. 

The tears stopped instantly, as he was very intrigued by what a crab pinch felt like and he happily carried on a conversation about crabs, and their pinches and when they would pinch etc.

Although I know that this isn’t really acknowledging his emotions, I still did something different and it was better than what I was doing before!

David was very upset in the morning before school as it was raining and it was his class’s turn to go on the scooters and go-carts, and the rain meant there would be no outside play and thus they would not get a turn on the scooters that week. 

I said that I wished that I had a huge magic wand that I could wave and that all the clouds would disappear and the sun would come out so that he would definitely have a chance on the scooters.  His face lit up, and he said, “What happened if by mistake, instead of making the clouds disappear, you turned yourself into a frog – then how would you hold the wand”. 

We were laughing and giggling and chatting away discussing the magic wand etc and within a couple of minutes the scooters were long forgotten.