6 Powerful Words

Have you ever had someone say something to you that made you stop dead in your tracks?-- like mouth gaping open in shock and you can actually hear your heart beating kind of reaction? If so, you know that type of reaction doesn't happen often and that it can be brought on by something that makes you feel wonderful or, like in this instance, by something that makes you feel like a little piece of your heart just broke. Well, as anyone who has spoken with me in the past two weeks knows, we had been having some trouble with Chloe acting up a bit and having more than her fair share of potty accidents. And for awhile, Micky and I took the completely wrong approach at dealing with this-- fussing at her harshly and/or taking away fun stuff she likes to do. Normally, these types of punishment would be fine-- she typically responds well to a good talking to or us turning off Little Bear as means of getting her to listen and do better. Notice the use of the words TYPICALLY and NORMALLY. It took us a week or so of her not being herself to realize that her TYPICAL and NORMAL have been changed forever. Emma is now 11 weeks old, and Chloe didn't start acting this way until about 2 weeks ago. And to be honest with you, I figured she'd already done all the adjusting she needed to do. Needless to say, I was WRONG. Not once has she shown any negative feelings towards Emma. If anything we have to keep her from loving on her too much. But she was showing us in those other ways (ways that we took awhile to see) that she's still trying to figure all this out. If you know me, you know I usually hate "psychobabble" advice and anything that "experts" have to say. Well, I may have to change my opinion on some of that. Tuesday I was pretty much at my wits end and decided to search for some advice on the Internet-- using my favorite search engine Google, I looked up some articles on potty training regression. And what do you know, they all said the same thing-- the #1 cause of regression is stress-- and the #1 cause of that stress is a new sibling. I don't think I can put into words how big of an idiot I felt like, but it was GINORMOUS! This really wasn't something I didn't already know, I was just trying to fool myself into thinking that this couldn't be happening to my child. ARROGANT!-- another word I think that described my approach. So anyway, that night Micky and I had a long talk and decided we needed to change our tactics and try to pay attention to what she was trying to tell us. And basically, she just wants to be held and hugged on and told stories and tickled and told how much we love her and played with and treated like the princess she is. You know what, that's all pretty easy to do once you take the time to realize what's really important. The house getting cleaned and laundry getting done sometimes just have to wait, and that Seinfeld rerun we've seen 10 times just needs to be turned off. As long as there's clean underwear in the house, we'll be ok! :-)
Ever since Micky and I have wised up and made some changes, we've gotten our old Chloe back! I missed her greatly!-- and the potty problem has resolved very quickly! Chloe summed it up best with 6 very powerful words. The other night after I told her a goodnight story and was tucking her into bed she reached up and put her hand on my cheek and said, "Mama, I'm glad we're friends again." My heart skipped a beat. All I could do was hug her and tell her I love her-- and then run downstairs to bawl my eyes out :-) It's amazing how perceptive children can be, and it makes me hurt inside to know that she thought I wasn't her friend for awhile. But trust me, I'll make sure she knows everyday that she is my truest friend and always will be.
Micky and I are well aware that we can learn a lot from our 3 year old, and she does indeed teach us new things everyday,we just have to stop whatever silly thing we're doing and pay attention!