Monday, October 22, 2007

3-year-olds are tricky

Three-year-olds are so tricky to deal with. On one hand, we as parents are supposed to encourage their independence, but sometimes, it is so much easier to limit them.

Griffin is basically not taking his naps anymore. Maybe once a week at best. I am trying to do "quiet time" in his room, but he usually loves to sing so much that he wakes Gray up. Then Gray is grumpy for the rest of the day. One of the dilemmas I am dealing with during quiet time is with potty training. I put a pull-up on him every day at nap time. If he sleeps, then he goes potty in the pull-up. If he does not sleep, then he comes to his bedroom door and yells, "I need to go potty", when he needs to go. I want him to use the potty, but the process of helping him always leads to waking up Gray. I don't think I can leave his bedroom door open and expect him to stay in his room for more than 5 minutes. What to do? Anyway he is also changing his clothes during nap time. So he has one outfit on when I put him down for a nap, and when I go back in at "potty time"... he is wearing a completely different set of clothes. Somehow he manages to get into his tall dresser and put on underwear, shorts, and a shirt. Today he put on a button down shirt. I know he can't do buttons, so I guess he just got lucky.

We are trying to use his alarm clock to help him with times to get up. In the morning, he knows he can't start calling for us until 7. Somedays we wish we had told him 8:) So this afternoon I told him he has to stay in his room until 3 and he can read books or play quietly. It is 2:30ish now and he has called for me twice already. Once to go potty and once to get out. I think he will get the concept, but I don't know if it will actually work.

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