The last 15 agonizing minutes of my life are a good example of a person with “issues”, and part of the excuse why I haven’t written here in months. If I still have any readers, I apologize, and appreciate your patience.

Let’s see - what have I been up to: Going backwards, I have been swamped at work - I started a new job within my department 2 months ago, and it’s keeping be constantly busy with immediate tasks - little time left to organize or just take a breather between 9:30 and 6. And the lack of organization just begets more urgent tasks which continue to preclude the possibility of finding time for organization… you get the idea.

Then there’s the summer. This one is actually a good thing, but it certainly has made the computer world play second fiddle. I can barely keep up with a few e-mails, let alone check fun and informative sites like sayitcornell.com. (And for those who are wondering, I refuse to go on Facebook, but that’s another story . I just checked in on SIC for the first time in awhile, and I was sad to discover that I missed out on something wonderful that Sheila’s family did, which is right up my alley. If you didn’t see it, they went raspberry picking at a new Organic farm very near to Cornell.

We’ve also done a little bit of gardening (after neglecting it pretty much since planting in May), and lots of getting-Chiara-outdoors where she can work off that never ending bubble of energy. The splash pad in Cornell is a favourite, even though we haven’t been all that many times. Lots of weekends taken up with visiting family. Oh, and I did get to enjoy a few selfish pleasures, like a quick trip to Vegas and San Diego with my university friends, one of whom got married… and a couple weeks ago I finally fulfilled my dream of skydiving, thanks to my lovely wife who gave it to me for my birthday (and didn’t take out any extra insurance policies - that I’m aware of I really didn’t think I’d be allowed to go until the kid(s) were married.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that I can have the same qualities which make parenting a spirited child amazing and difficult - things from unusual weird ideas, quick tendency to get excited, a bit of scatter-brained forgetfulness, and never wanting to miss out on life, or anything in it.

I did manage to finish another chapter in the “Raising your spirited child” book that I had meant to use as a focal point of this blog when it first started. They had some good examples of kids who learned to recognize their own behavioural tendencies and needs (like when they might need some time alone to cool down, and then go back and join their friends). I’m told it can take years for this to develop, but the parent’s job is to help them learn about themselves and how to interact with their environment, so we persist through the occasional tears and meltdowns, and try to help them grow into the person which reflects all the good qualities you have or wished you had….

Oh, and about those 15 minutes? I finally finally finally made the time to put something on my blog, and I was foiled at the login prompt. I searched several old e-mail threads where I had asked Sheila for help with my username and password, and I found some of the e-mails, but not the answer. How could I be so silly as to not document it somewhere obvious after struggling before?

I’m home alone for the afternoon and have many todos to take care of before wife and child get back, but I finally wanted to honour my obligations to this blog - and lost even more time before I could get started! Now my stomach is growling and the laundry machine is buzzing…

I hope you wish my Passionate child as much luck living with me as I do!

Tonight I just have a quick, mild complaint about our most reliable ‘trick’ not working. I mentioned already that sleep has been the biggest issue and source of what seems like unfair levels of difficulty in raising merely one child. But one thing that has almost always worked (even when we didn’t really want it to) was the magic of the automobile vibration - a secret probably used by parents since about 1908.

Anyway, we’ve formed a bit of a weekly tradition over the past few months of taking Chiara to the YMCA in the evenings on Thursdays. They have a huge inflatable bouncy castle and other young child toys in the gym, and Hilary and Chiara have something healthy like an egg wrap from the mini café. Then I join after working a bit later, Hilary goes off to get a gym workout in, and when Chiara is all tuckered out, I take her home.

Now, even though it’s under 15 minutes to get home, she typically passes out on the way - once even in mid sentence! And she’s really good about going right back to sleep after being roused slightly when I carry her in from the car. (We had a discussion about this a few months ago when she started crying for hours under these circumstances, and I’m really proud of her for actually seeing reason and consciously changing her behaviour - especially in a situation where you can’t think clearly).

But today, even though I doubled the ride home by doing an extra lap of the unlit areas down to Reesor Road and Steeles, she just couldn’t fall asleep. She was clearly exhausted, but her mind couldn’t stop, and she just wouldn’t stop talking. I feel some guilt, as she gets this genetically from me. Part of the time, she was singing “Robin in the Rain“, which we listed to yesterday (it is catchy - thanks Raffi). She also wondered if the Y ever closed, and why. She expressed some worry that Mommy wouldn’t come home from the Y, and wasn’t happy to hear that she wasn’t following in the car behind us, which we do sometimes if Hilary doesn’t feel up to a workout that Thursday. She quizzed me on what day comes after insert random weekday name here>.

I had the classical music on (Thank you 94.1; oh, and 96.3 - except when commercials come on!), but she just demonstrated her innate desire for more - as is the Raison d’être of the spirited child.

Well, luckily she acknowledged she was tired, and after a quick toothbrush, we skipped bath and she willingly went right to bed at 8:30. Some last minute expressions of energy and, of course, a desire for snack, even though she had just had a late dinner AND several bites of my late dinner at the Y when I arrived a few minutes after she was “stuffed”.

So I was able to get things in order and then watch the 3rd period of the Leafs game. Unfortunately, their wheels are spinning too, and they’ve got one more chance on Saturday night to get the job done and make the playoffs - if the Isles drop at least one point in their final 2 games.

Oops! Sorry - off topic. See you all at the big Easter Egg Hunt. I don’t have to tell you what we look like - you’ll know a Spirited Child when you see one!

I really don’t understand why someone who is eloquent for her age, and has demonstrated a mastery of cause-and-effect-type of rational thought; would almost always choose the more difficult option of continuing to push us after we’ve had enough, and given her a warning.

It doesn’t matter that it could be taking away something good she was expecting, or sending her to a time-out, or making sure it’s a logical consequence directly related to the transgression… It doesn’t matter that we’re consistent about following through on our “threats”, and she knows that we will do it, she just likes to fight us (and then complain about it later), and we’re not really sure why.

Anyway, we’re pretty wiped from the last couple days and then - a small miracle. She put herself to bed and fell asleep at 5:45 when we weren’t looking! And the sleep lasted! We figured this would be a 1 hour nap like yesterday, which would lead to a 45-minute inconsolable whining and anything-you-say-or-do-is-wrong wake-up session, followed by a cranky evening to boot.

But this time, all the bedtime routine triggers simply worked, the one time we weren’t hoping they would. You see, all the parenting books tell you that if you do a few basic things, your child will magically fall into line, and you will live happily ever after. The main thing is a predictable bedtime/sleep routine. Well, we always did that, but they don’t tell you that it may not work on a spirited child. Sleep has always been her worst thing, and it brings down her (and us), probably causing the vast majority of our difficulties in life, but we tried everything, and were never able to fix it. It finally got better after 3 years, but even then it still goes through bad phases.

But back to the story. So what happened is Hilary decided (out of love) to take her day off work with our truant 3-year-old instead of taking a much needed break, and was rewarded with terrible behaviour. Finally they went to the park, and Hilary let her get all muddy with other children. When it was time to come home, an immediate bath was necessary, and Hilary put on Chiara’s pyjamas right after, even though it was only 5:30.

At this point, after a stressful day (that was her fault), Chiara informed Hilary that she would like some quiet time in her room. This is very rare, so it was encouraged. She wanted a snack too, so one was brought. I got home early, Hilary ran out to an appointment, and for once I started cooking, expecting Chiara to come downstairs at any moment. Well, after 15 minutes of being allowed to prepare dinner with no distractions, I finally went up to see what was wrong. And there she was, sleeping on top of her covers. When Hilary came home, we actually had some time to talk - just adults with no interruptions!

And even though we waited for a wake-up and the problems to start again, it didn’t happen. I just tucked her in now at 10:30, and a few whimpers later, she stayed asleep. And I’d better get to bed now too, because I have a feeling she’ll be up really early in the morning. Thank goodness for the extra DST, keeping the Sun away an hour longer than it normally would be on March 27.

Lately, for 2 days at least, Chiara’s behaviour and listening has been pretty good - far fewer arguments and problems than usual.

But still, when she finally gets to the back door, and gets her jacket and boots and hat on (often with my help, and after a few requests to do so), then begins an onslaught of problems, questions, and demands. A few of them are sometimes my fault - like if I forgot to get her to brush teeth, and only realize it at the last minute - or if her hat and mitts aren’t at the back door because she went out front to play the previous night. But mostly, it’s issues that she creates.

She usually wants to bring something from home to the preschool, which is never a good idea, even when labelled. Many times she wants to bring one of her dolls, even though she has a teddy bear that stays there all the time for nap time. (Of course, being a spirited child, she’s the only one in her class that never sleeps at nap time, and the teachers have given up, and just try to keep her reasonably quiet).

So usually, if she wants to bring something “disposable”, or not too important, like one of her many arts and crafts she has done at home, I’ll let it, but if she wants to bring the doll that used to be her mother’s as a child, I’m pretty reluctant. So that’s just one issue, and it comes up almost every day.

Then today, I pulled out my chap-stick and tried to quickly put some on her lips, like we’ve done countless times before. But she yelled no, and wanted to go across the house to get her fruity-rainbow lip balm that she had just found after we had hid it for a few weeks because she had been using too much. But after the process of convincing her to help get dressed, me making sure I had my work bag, my squash bag, and a bag of all the stuff to bring to preschool, I wasn’t going to let her take her boots off and start something new. So that began some tears and arguing, and then I suggested she could use her other one that’s in her cubby when we get to preschool, but then she screamed again when I opened the door, and said she now wanted to use the one in my pocket - which is where we were 2 minutes before.

She of course had to do a little dance and wander around the garage for a minute before coming over to the car. I should write another article on the challenges of discipline, but this was one time I was busy loading the car anyway, so it didn’t take too long after that to get her to come over and climb in.

Of course I have to let her just be a silly child sometimes, but the problem is that I’ll be caring and stop the morning rush and take the time to read her a story or let her do a quick drawing… but after that I expect her to have the gratefulness and maturity to help me hurry along the rest of our morning routine. I guess I’ve learned that despite her apparent intelligence, she’s still 3 and a half, and doesn’t have that maturity. But it makes it all the more frustrating for me, always trying to find a balance between giving her some freedom and insisting on some level of obedience at some times.

At least this time she didn’t wander off the shovelled path between the house and detached garage, so my pants didn’t get too messed up when leaning in to hook up her carseatbelt in the back of our 2-door civic. I’ve told her not to do that enough times over the past 3 weeks that it finally seems to have sunk in, so I praise her for her good behaviour on that regard.

Meanwhile, in the car, she usually sees a little toy, doll, or thing sitting in the car that she hasn’t seen for 24 hours and thus is excited to grab and talk about. I’m trying to do up the seatbelt and she’s leaning forward and reaching across! How many times do I have to say “I’ll pass you anything you want after your seatbelt is on, but you have to sit still while I do the seatbelt or it doesn’t work!”.

Sigh. 15 minutes from the time we think we’re ready to go at the back door, to the time the car starts.

A couple of days ago, during a week already full of rough behaviour, we woke up too early due to a slightly cold house and a complaining child. I can’t tell you exactly how early because the power was out. My wife Hilary had to get to work early that day and after some effort trying to settle Chiara back down, finally needed to get ready. In the hopes that I could still get a bit more sleep, she brought Chiara into our warm bed, so that maybe she’d stop whining and go back to sleep. I said a few gentle words, gave her a kiss, and asked her to come sleep for a bit longer.

But of course, she didn’t want to settle down, even with getting her way and being in our bed. I was so zonked, I just lay there on the cusp of sleep while Chiara whined. It’s not like she wanted something else in particular (i.e no hug or song or tuck-in, or even getting up with her was going to help, I know this by now), she just wanted to cry and whine, just like all week. She settled for about 2 minutes, but then started crying again, saying she was hungry. So I get up, tell her nicely to come with me so we can get food. Does she stop crying? Of course not…

I get to the kitchen… and wait! I’m in luck. The night before I had noticed some muffins in the freezer (baked by Hilary and Chiara 2 weeks ago), and put a few in the fridge overnight. One even had rainbow sprinkles, her favourite, and probably her idea while she was helping Mommy bake. I thought “Here is a chance to turn things around”, turn a day that started off badly into a good one.

She briefly stops crying as I exclaim with excitement “I just remembered, I planned a special breakfast for us last night”. (It’s important to let her know this was planned before, so there’s no chance she mistakes this as a reward for the kind of behaviour she’s been doing this morning). For a few moments, it looks good. I was careful to ask if she wanted it heated up in the microwave, toaster oven, or not heated at all (God forbid I do the wrong thing, and start another battle - usually I don’t let her get away with those kind of trivialities, but avoiding the battle in the first place can save headaches). I bring her favourite topping, margarine, over to the table, and begin to cut the muffin in half. The knife is 5 mm in when she screams “Don’t cut it!”. I stop cutting, she doesn’t stop crying.

“Look, I stopped, I won’t cut it, ok?”

After at least a minute of crying, I barely make out the words through the tears: “Now it looks like a bum!“. It did actually, it was almost funny except that I was in no mood to laugh. Then: “Put butter on!”

“How can I put on butter if you won’t let me cut it?” All her life, we cut the muffin in half and put butter on the insides.
“Put it across the top to seal the crack you made”

Fine, I try it, but she’s still upset.

Through the gushing tears “More kleenex”. The table is already covered. We don’t make her get up to throw it in the proper garbage yet if she’s already in her booster seat.

Finally she slows down the crying enough to pick up the muffin to eat it. As she does, the bottom half (for some reason) starts to break away and fall off. More explosions of crying.

At this point, I’ve had it. She’s been crying well over 1/2 hour straight, and I’ve been pretty gentle with my words, tone, and demeanor, trying to give her everything she wanted, just the way she wanted, even when she changed her mind or had no good reason. I give one or two more warnings, that I’m leaving the room if she won’t try to settle down and simply eat the muffin. After all, like I say every morning, we need to get ready for preschool and work, we can’t spend all morning on one thing.

No progress, so I say she can eat it or not, it’s up to her, I’m done with it, I’m going to have a shower. During the shower I’m a bit worried. I had gotten a glass of milk for us to share, rather than get her her own plastic one. We also don’t bother with the booster-seat-seatbelt anymore. She’s old enough to not have trouble with either of these things, and the house is childproofed… and I decided I did the right thing since the risk was low and I was really at my breaking point.

5 minutes later, I poke my head out and listen. She’s still making upset noises, but not full-out wailing anymore. I call out in a nice tone so that she knows I’m here and can hear her now (despite how frustrated I can get, I don’t want to scare her into thinking she’s alone).

She calls up that she wants more milk. Sounds fair. I come downstairs, cold and in a towel, to get her more milk, thinking the muffin must have made her throat dry. I can’t believe my eyes, the full muffin is still there, untouched (don’t forget how “hungry” she was 45 minutes ago). Furthermore, the glass of milk is still untouched, and half-full. I point this out. She wants more milk. This is the 4th time we’ve had this particlar battle in the past few weeks.

Again, I’ve decided negotiation is over for this morning. I can’t let her learn to get her way too often when it doesn’t make sense, or that “more whining” will do the trick. Time to set limits.

“No, don’t argue with Daddy. I will give you more milk when that glass is empty. Or else we would end up wasting.” (we’ve discussed this concept before). I also tell her (in a moderate voice), that I can’t believe she hasn’t eaten the muffin yet.

I go back upstairs to continue getting dressed. Within a minute, she’s calling for milk again.

“Is the glass empty?”

“Yes”

So as I come down the stairs again, she finally starts eating the muffin. Relief. I thought I’d have to live with the guilt that my child was starving because I couldn’t meet her every quirky demand.

What’s that saying about leading a horse to water?

My wife Hilary and I read lots of baby and parenting books both before and after Chiara was born – mostly before, when this thing called “free time” existed in our lives . The problem is, there may be parenting experts, but one thing they all agree on is that “every child is different”, and I can guarantee there is no one book or parenting expert for your exact child (except for the one YOU are becoming!). A lot of the ideas we read about sounded really good in theory, but didn’t work when we tried them, or maybe worked temporarily.

My general philosophy on parenting has developed into the following strategy: get as much knowledge and suggestions as you can from books and other parents, and then pick an approach to whatever situation you may be dealing with and try it. If it doesn’t work, try another one. Remember, once something works, GREAT, but don’t expect it to stick forever… The next passionate challenge is right around the corner!

So back to my “I’m no expert” comment. It might be more honest to say that I often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing! But as a loving and devoted parent, I do the only thing I can – try, try, and keep trying, despite how impossible it seems sometimes.

Ironically, I am currently trying to teach Chiara about the value of trying and persisting. The Passionate Child is intelligent and clever and able to accomplish more than you’d expect – but they are also often impatient and want to get things done easily so they can move on to the next thing. This means asking Daddy to do socks or zippers or mitts, even though she has the skills to do most or all of that herself. I have to resist my first urge to simply provide for “daddy’s girl”, and ask her to try it a few times first, and then ask for help if needed. The phrase I came up with when the first hints of whining begin for such a situation is: “Trying, not crying”.

It’s going well, the last couple of weeks. She always makes some progress with a challenge on her own, is comforted that I’ll help her in the end if needed, and seems to understand and accept that this is something expected of her – something that makes me proud of her (positive praise as always). Could it be that I’m doing things right?

Looking forward on this blog, I plan to share with you some of my old stories, and of course new ones as they come up. I’ll be looking for YOUR help and ideas, and I’d be happy to chip in some thoughts if you have any questions or specific situations to share.

Article by DavidC for SayItCornell.com
©2007 All Rights Reserved

Now to be honest, I thought I was prepared for life to be a little crazy for the first little while upon having a child. Then I found out what happens when you change that to very crazy for years, and try to handle that all on little or interrupted sleep most nights.

Sound familiar? Keep reading…

And then to cap it all off, it seemed very odd and unlikely that other friends and new parents really didn’t seem to be having that hard a time. Did that mean there was something wrong with me? Sure, I’m a type-A personality, so I am destined to be a little more stressed than average… but that is the wrong way to think about it. What I’ve found is that in many cases other parents are struggling too. They are just reluctant to open up about it. And in many other cases, their children are just different than mine – happy to go with the flow, instead of always needing to create a new challenge.

Our Spirited Daughter began as a high needs baby: always wanting us there, always active, always hungry, never wanting to sleep (might miss something!), always learning, always pushing the limits, and she is always excited and passionate about her current object of interest. But, paradoxically, she is also able to easily jump to the next thing in a cycle of energy that can leave her bored or aggravated. I have so much love and pride and marvel at my daughter’s obvious potential – if she could only let my wife and me have a few minutes of rest to recuperate!

If this is striking a chord with you at all, please stay tuned! We need each other, and I’m hoping to get lots of feedback.

David

Raising Passion was inspired many moons ago shortly after I started dialogue with David. We quickly discovered how much we had in common regarding our ’spirited’ daughters and the extreme emotions that ensue while parents like us just try to keep up! A spirited child is an intelligent child and, in my opinion, s/he thirsts for knowledge – only everything needs to happen all at once. Their emotions are heightened, leaving proud parents awestruck or, well…, completely exhausted!

After various such discussions, I asked David to Blog it! for us and he readily agreed (after some questioning). We are very excited about this new venture and we hope that this will provide an opportunity for you to join in, share tips and advice, or seek guidance from some of us who have been doing this for a while. David, she’s all yours!

Sheila Wilson, SayItCornell.com
PS If you would like to set up a Blog it!, email us with your proposal!