Tonight was not fun.  I have a 2 and a 3 year old.  If you know me in per­son, you have prob­a­bly heard far too many K and A sto­ries for your lik­ing.  I love them SO much that some­times I feel like I can­not stop talk­ing about them.  Tonight, how­ever, I felt inadequate.

I could give all the back­ground (me being in Chicago for the week­end, stay­ing up too late a few nights recently, mov­ing 3 weeks ago, etc) or I could explain that they both woke up between 5 and 5:30 this morn­ing, but in the end it didn’t mat­ter why.  Tonight, they were so tired, and they sim­ply melted down.  Both of them.  For an hour and fif­teen min­utes.  When Jason was gone.

Hav­ing been a spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher in my past life, I often give off the appear­ance of remain­ing calm and know­ing just what to do in a tough sit­u­a­tion.  Tonight, I felt like I had no idea what to do.  I knew they were both tired.  I knew tonight would be an early bed­time.  When Jason left, I knew I just had to get them ready for bed and lay­ing down.  Exhaus­tion would take over from there.

Unfor­tu­nately, we hit a snag in the road right around clean up time.  They had invented a new game.  I’m not sure of the details, but as it appeared to me, the goal was to pile as many toys from the play room as they could onto our liv­ing room chair.  When it was time to clean up, they were ready and will­ing.  I sug­gested we each put away 3 toys.  Know­ing how tired they were, I planned to do the rest later on my own just to get them in bed.  Well, it turned out that I unknow­ingly took the toy that K had his heart set on putting away back into the play room.   I told him I was sorry I hadn’t known he wanted that one.  K began to cry.  He explained to me over and over that he had wanted to put both big trucks back into the room.  I offered him a cou­ple solu­tions.  He could go get the truck and put it in him­self or he could pick up x, y, or z toy.  Those didn’t work for him.  From there, every­thing was wrong.  He didn’t like his pajamas(which he chose), his tooth­brush, his tooth paste (which he chose), or his diaper(which he chose).  He also didn’t want to help fill up his water cup, nor did he want me to fill it.  He did want water though.

Dur­ing this time, A was also upset.  He is pretty sen­si­tive, and I think that between being tired and K feel­ing upset, it was just too much for him, and he shared in the sad­ness.  Poor kids.  I tried to take turns nurs­ing them.  I offered them cud­dles and hugs.  I empathized with them.  “It sounds like you are feel­ing sad.”  “You really wanted to take that truck into the play room.”

At some point, I started to feel over­whelmed, really over­whelmed.  My instincts were to say some­thing like this, “Enough.  No more cry­ing.  You are tired.  Lay down.  I am not fight­ing over this any­more.”  I really wanted to do those things.  I didn’t actu­ally think they would help or calm the boys down.  I didn’t think that they would make K or A see the light and think “yep, she’s right.  That is enough cry­ing.  Guess I’m okay now.”  I felt like I didn’t want to deal with it any­more.  That was about 25 or 30 min­utes in.

I didn’t say those things though.  I also didn’t say any­thing like, “You can go to your room, and when you are done yelling, you can come back out here.”  I also didn’t spank (and never have) either one.  These are com­mon sug­ges­tions that I get when some­one over­hears me talk­ing about a melt­down at our house or if some­one hap­pens to be over when it happens.

I didn’t say or do those things, because that is not the way we have cho­sen to par­ent.  In my moments of clar­ity dur­ing a melt­down, I often think about how I would feel if Jason and I were hav­ing a fight that included me being upset and in tears.  If he left me alone until I could talk about things rea­son­ably, I don’t think that would help me feel loved or com­forted.  If he said, “I’m going to go watch tv until you are ready to talk” I would be m.a.d. If he tried to help me feel bet­ter and com­forted me for a few min­utes but left when it wasn’t work­ing, I think I would feel even worse.

I know that kids and adults are not in the same roles in fam­i­lies, but I do think that there is value in allow­ing a child to express emo­tions and val­i­dat­ing them.  I also think there is value in being with a child dur­ing a tough emo­tional time.  Because of these beliefs and many oth­ers, we choose to par­ent in the way I described in this post.

I haven’t writ­ten a lot about our spe­cific par­ent­ing beliefs on this blog.  I have alluded to them, and we try to prac­tice what we believe when we inter­act with our kids although some­times I fall far short of my goal.  One of the rea­sons I chose to write this post and pub­lish it was a con­ver­sa­tion I had with a friend over din­ner a cou­ple months ago.  Our friends are mar­ried with no chil­dren.  They had sup­per at our house one night.  Dur­ing the course of the evening, I said, “we don’t spank” and “we don’t use time outs.”  The wife of the cou­ple said to me, “What do you do?”  So, I thought I would give an exam­ple of what we do because both spank­ing and time­outs are so com­mon that some­times peo­ple don’t real­ize that there are other options.  I know, I didn’t.

To give a lit­tle res­o­lu­tion to the sit­u­a­tion, I’ll let you know what hap­pened to finally resolve the melt­down.  After we went into the bed­room to get ready for bed, K threw his cup into the hall­way.  (We keep a gate in the door­way so they don’t wake up and wan­der around our apart­ment at night.)  K felt pretty sad that his cup was in the hall­way.  I told him (prob­a­bly around 50 times) “I can go get your cup if you sit or lay by your pil­low.”  I felt like I needed him to be in a place where he would be safe and at least a bit calm before I could leave him and A in the room to get his cup.  Finally, he said, “Can I have mama milk?”  I nursed them each one at a time.  They laid down, and they were asleep within 15 min­utes.  Poor kiddos.

Yes, appar­ently one or both Jason and I say “oofta.” Yes, we also live in North Dakota, so it prob­a­bly hap­pens more than we ever real­ize. This fact was ham­mered home to us the other night at sup­per when Jason said, “oofta” after A had a cough­ing spell. K looked at him and said, “Asa poopy?” So appar­ently, we not only use the word oofta, but we use it as an exple­tive when chang­ing a smelly diaper.

More and more over the past few weeks, we’ve been hear­ing K repeat things that we have said to him. One night, Jason was giv­ing him two choices for get­ting his dia­per changed. K kept telling Jason that he didn’t want to have his (poopy) dia­per changed. He wanted to wear it. (On a side note, you can tell we’re not exactly steam­ing down the road of potty learn­ing . ) Jason told him, “That’s not a choice.” Later that night dur­ing the bed­time rou­tine, K and Jason were talk­ing and at one point, K said to Jason, “No, Daddy, that not a choice.”

Last week, we spent a lit­tle time with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. One of the days, my nieces (ages 6 and 4 were over). At one point, I heard them argu­ing, and the six year old was say­ing, “That’s fair!” to her sis­ter over whether or not she needed to share some toys with her. Fast for­ward to this morn­ing. I was show­ing K the new library books we had checked out for this week. He was pretty excited about them, and he kept pulling them out of the bag and say­ing, “That very fair!”

Then, there are the things he picks up that I’m not sure where they came from. “You know bet­ter, Mommy!” “A, you being bad!” “No, no, no, no, no!” These are not things we say to him. I know that now that his peers are speak­ing more and we are around more and dif­fer­ent peo­ple, his pool of expe­ri­ences to draw from also grows.

He’s at an age where he is such a sponge. He doesn’t have pre­con­ceived ideas of what is fun or not fun (video games vs. books) or what music is good or not good (pop music vs. opera). He loves so many dif­fer­ent things. I think that his new ten­dency to repeat things that we say at just the right time is good for us in more than one way. While it reminds me that he’s always lis­ten­ing to what we say, it also reminds me that he is pick­ing stuff up All. The. Time. I am rais­ing a lit­tle sponge, and I want him to be able to absorb all that he can before this time ends.

Since he was born, A has been sleep­ing in our room. He slept in a pack n play for a while. Then, for a while, he slept with us. Then, back into the pack n play. Last week, we decided to move him into a crib in the same room as K. I thought that it would be a rough tran­si­tion for A. He’s always been a baby who needed to be close to Jason and to myself. I fig­ured it would take two good weeks before we could tell how things were going. Well, he sur­prised us. After a cou­ple ini­tial strug­gles, he has done just won­der­fully. He nurses. Then, Jason takes him to bed where he lays down and falls asleep. K has been strug­gling with the tran­si­tion more though. Unfor­tu­nately, I think this came at a bad time for him. He’s also at a stage where he’s kind of ready to start potty learn­ing. He’s not able to get through the day with­out a nap, but if he does take a nap, then he strug­gles to fall asleep. I think that hav­ing both of those things to deal with and this tran­si­tion of A mov­ing into his room has been tough on him. Poor guy. I’ve been try­ing to give him some extra love and mommy time. He has ramped his nurs­ing up, too. Now, I just have to laugh at my wor­ries a few months ago that he wouldn’t still be nurs­ing at 3. I think he nursed 5 or 6 times yes­ter­day, and 3 or 4 today. Some­times, I won­der if A will wean before K.

Wel­come to the Sep­tem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val! Thanks for vis­it­ing, and be sure to read all the way to the end of my post so you can visit oth­ers who have shared their thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed.

When I was preg­nant with my first child, I knew I wanted to breast­feed. I did some read­ing. I searched the inter­net for what I felt were infor­ma­tive arti­cles. By the time my breast­feed­ing class at the hos­pi­tal rolled around I felt pretty con­fi­dent. My con­fi­dence increased when I went to the class. She didn’t tell me one thing in an almost two hour class that I didn’t already know! I knew I was going to be able to do it. As a sort of insur­ance, I found a breast­feed­ing forum/message board and asked if there was any­thing else I should do to be pre­pared or informed. The answers were pretty run-of-the-mill. “Just keep on going!” “Don’t let any­one talk you into quit­ting.” “You can do it!” I knew that I was set.

When K was born, I had a bit of a sur­prise. Maybe shock is a bet­ter word. He was born nearly 4 weeks early and he wouldn’t latch. He looked at my breast. He half-heartedly opened his mouth. Then, he fell asleep. What?!? This wasn’t the plan. He was sup­posed to know what to do, because I had done my part to get informed about breast­feed­ing. Well, after three days in the hos­pi­tal, we were dis­charged. I had a nip­ple shield and a baby who ate for 45–60 min­utes every 3 hours. Not exactly fit­ting my plan.

For­tu­nately, my mom had breast­fed both myself (for around 18 months) and my brother (for nearly 3 years). She was an amaz­ing sup­port. She kept telling me, “Trust your­self. You know best. You know what is right for you and your baby.” She got up with me for the mid­dle of the night feed­ings and held K after­wards until he had his burp and could fall back asleep. She vis­ited with me when I thought I was too tired to do another feed­ing. She was won­der­ful, and that was a major com­po­nent for my suc­cess. I am sure of it.

When she left and I was home alone with my baby, I began to doubt myself, so I went back to the mes­sage board where I had asked for help so many weeks prior. I began post­ing ques­tion after ques­tion after ques­tion. I got won­der­ful sup­port, and I got great infor­ma­tion. There was one per­son in par­tic­u­lar on that mes­sage board who I still feel a debt of grat­i­tude toward. Her name was Joan, and she was a mod­er­a­tor of the breast­feed­ing forum. Sure, other peo­ple would answer my ques­tion, but I didn’t feel like I had the real answer until I heard from Joan. Over the weeks and months, I gained con­fi­dence, and I also gained a friend­ship. Joan is still one of my close on-line friends. She and I have kept in touch over the past few years, and when a friend of mine had a baby who had nurs­ing trou­bles (over­sup­ply and over­ac­tive let­down, some­thing I knew very lit­tle about) Joan was avail­able over the phone to help her out, too. I also began read­ing www.kellymom.com dur­ing any spare moment I had. I loved that web­site. It was so easy to nav­i­gate and so easy to read and under­stand. It is where I got the bulk of my early breast­feed­ing knowledge.

Almost two years later, when I had my sec­ond son, I was pretty con­fi­dent again. I had been through so much with K that I thought I should have it under con­trol. But, as almost any­one who has breast­fed knows, every baby is dif­fer­ent. With A, I had dif­fer­ent issues, and again I turned to www.kellymom.com and a sup­port­ive on-line com­mu­nity to help me get through the first weeks that were tough.

Now, I’ve been nurs­ing K for almost 35 months, and I’ve been tan­dem nurs­ing K and A for 14 months. I feel like each day I can learn some­thing about breast­feed­ing whether it be from a book, a web­site, a friend, another nurs­ing momma, or one of my kids. I think it’s one of those things where you can keep learn­ing more and more, but I’m not sure that you can ever say that you have “learned to breast­feed.” To me, it’s a jour­ney more than a destination.

Check out these blogs for more thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed (updated through­out the day):

• BreastfeedingMums.com
• Breastfeeding123.com
• Hobomama.blogspot.com
• Breastfeeding.blog.motherwear.com
• KateWicker.com
• Babyfingers.blogspot.com
• StopDropandBlog.com
• NurturingNotes.blogspot.com

Right now, I have two sons.  Both are at the age where they reg­u­larly have melt­downs or tantrums when they don’t get what they want.  Luck­ily, K is get­ting to the age where he can under­stand some­times when he doesn’t get what he wants.  He doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily like it, but he can under­stand that some­times things just can’t hap­pen in a way that he wants them to hap­pen.  Unfor­tu­nately, A is still pretty young and we’re not to that stage of under­stand­ing the whys and why nots of deci­sion mak­ing.  How­ever, his tantrums are often pretty short lived, so that is a plus.

To be hon­est, this is one stage that I didn’t ever antic­i­pate.  I thought about what would hap­pen when they were both nurs­ing and how to han­dle that.  I thought about what I would do when A became mobile and wanted to take K’s toys.  I thought about what I would do when we were at the mall and one child went left and the other went right.  I just didn’t think about hav­ing them both be in the tantrum stage at the same time.  Whoops.  I wish I would have thought more about this stage so I could have had some ideas on how to pro­ceed when it arrived.  Instead, I’ve had to take each day as it comes and learn from the one before.

Right now, K’s tantrums or melt­downs tend to hap­pen when he is hun­gry or tired.  Gen­er­ally, when he starts to yell or cry, my first thought is when did he last sleep (and how was the sleep qual­ity) and when did he last eat.  If either of those is con­tribut­ing to the issue, I try to remem­ber that.  Of course, it doesn’t excuse a tantrum, but it does put the cause into per­spec­tive.  He’s pretty seri­ous about being mad, but I have to admit that I have a pretty hard time keep­ing a straight face when he starts to jump up and down and wave his arms at me in an attempt to show me just how angry he is.   Unfor­tu­nately, if Jason and I don’t catch the tantrum early or if we don’t react in a con­struc­tive man­ner, it can go on for a while.  That is def­i­nitely the draw­back of an older child’s tantrums.

A on the other hand tends to explode into melt­down mode as soon as he wor­ries some­thing might not go his way.  In fact, today, he and K were play­ing in our play kitchen area.  A thought that K was tak­ing a toy from him when actu­ally I put it on the floor instead of let­ting it fall.  A turned toward K and had his mouth WIDE open in antic­i­pa­tion of a good, hard bite.  When he saw his toy on the floor, he just sat down and started play­ing with it.  Luck­ily, the tantrum was avoided.  Unfor­tu­nately, he is cur­rently in a phase when he hates, hates, HATES hav­ing his dia­per changed.  Some­times, all I have to do is move toward the dia­pers and he starts get­ting mad at me.  He is eas­ily dis­tracted though, so once the dia­per change is over, he’s happy again.  Yay!

Right now, I don’t think that I have a “good” or 100% effec­tive way of respond­ing to either one of them.  I’m not sure if I ever will.  I do think that par­ent­ing isn’t always about find­ing the most effec­tive or effi­cient way of deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion.  I think it’s more impor­tant to respond in a way that is respect­ful of the child and myself.  I haven’t read the entire book, but I’ve seen Har­vey Karp on a few tv shows.  His book, The Hap­pi­est Tod­dler on the Block has some good tips.  Also, Eliz­a­beth Pant­ley has a book called The No Cry Dis­ci­pline Solu­tion.  I haven’t read the entire thing, but the one part of it that suck out to me was that a child will not learn from what you are say­ing once he/she is cry­ing.  I think part of par­ent­ing is seek­ing out solu­tions and then using what works.  For us, we haven’t found a fool­proof method, but that won’t keep me from con­tin­u­ing to look!