Project Enlightenment- Round 2

You could say that we are starting family therapy early at Casa Vinson, but then I feel a little pressure to make progress, any progress on potty training before the baby arrives. I am already fearing major jealousy issues and regression behavior. One of the recommendations from the on site observation was for us to come in as a family for us to sit down with one of their counselors for a longer session. Ben came too which turned out to be a good thing as the counselor was also able to talk to him in person and watch our interaction.

It was a little weird to have some complete stranger watch you take your child to the bathroom, or listen intently to you and critique your parenting style when you interacted as a family.

But we came away with some new suggestions to try and combat the hiding, the lying, and escalations into tantrums. She also gave us some advice on making transitions as getting out the house many mornings has also become a testament of wills. We are looking into taking his picture in all the various transitions throughout his day that he then can physically move on a Velcro board and then do it with out argument. The site Do2Learn has an example.

Most telling to me was a very pointed conversation she had about being more firm in telling him and not asking him to do something. She felt this was part of the potty training issues and outright nailed my typical MO of trying the nice route, becoming frustrated and then either doing it myself or becoming overly angry. I was kinda surprised at this quick observation but when I think about it I can justify it as I feel like for 8 straight hours I have to be a badass with my students to get them to do anything, and once home I just want to change gears. I would also attribute some aspect of wanting to parent in the polar opposite way I was. Bill and I were parented in very, very different styles and thus coming to a consensus is a continual work in progress.

Just having some new options to try while at home over break is a start and I am very thankful for the time they have already taken with us. both Ben will have a follow up observation and we will go in again in early 2010. I am not expecting that any of the suggestions will come without conscious effort, but change doesn't come without work and practice. It's a place to start, start-over, continue, whatever you want to call it to better parenting.