Big Girl Words

If you are the parent of a toddler, you have on more than one occasion asked said toddler to "use your words" instead of screaming incoherently. The reason being you can help them if you know what the heck is going on.

If the tantrum is because they can't find a favorite toy, great. Why don't we both look for it together.

If they are hungry, that is easily remedied.

If they are tired, you can move them towards a nap or bed (hopefully).

If they want to do something they are not supposed to do, well hopefully you can distract them with something else.

But the key is having them verbalize their emotions to let you know what is wrong.

Lets look at how we at the But Why Mommy household have put this theory into action. Bunny is an incredibly verbal child and we have encouraged her to verbalize her emotions.

Exhibit A:

"Frustrated. Momma, where baby lizard?"
"I don't know baby, let's look."
"Frustrated, momma."
"He's not here. He's not over there." Now momma is getting frustrated.
"Frustrated, momma. Where baby lizard?"
"Let's retrace our steps. We got up, got the lizards out. You played with them. Momma vacuumed . . ." Has sickening realization, runs to vacuum, pulls out bottom half of small rubber lizard. Oh no.
"FRUSTRATED!" Real tears streaming down her face. "Fix him momma. Fix him."
"Momma can't fix him, baby."
"FRUSTRATED!"
"Would you like to watch Dora?"
"Yes." Tears subsiding, no longer frustrated.

So the theory doesn't work quite as well in practice. But at least we all know how we are feeling.

Things overheard in my house over the weekend

"No pants, pants too scary!"

Now I've heard of sassy pants, liar liar pants on fire, and even kitty pants (Tabasco's nickname - he's a tuxedo cat), but I have never heard of scary pants. In fact I am pretty sure that pants would never intentionally scare anyone.

So what was the problem? Who knows? Bunny had a little accident which necessitated new pants. So we got new pants out and the screaming commenced. Did she not like the pants we had picked out? Probably. Did she not want to wear pants at all? Likely.

This problem has cropped up on more than one occasion, even when she gets to pick out the pants herself. It seems that she preferrs to run around in just a diaper and shirt. She has even refused to take a nap wearing pants. She will just start yelling "Pants off, pants off" until you remove the offending article of clothing No problem when we are in the house but big problem if we are trying to leave. You see we live in Wisconsin and even though it is spring, it is still way to cold to go without pants. Plus people will look at you funny if your toddler is just wearing a diaper.

Since we were headed to my parents house for dinner, we needed to get some sort of pant or other leg covering on her. Luckily she agreed to wear a dress and tights, so the crisis was averted for a day. But who knows what it will be like today.

Taking to my bed

Today as most days Bunny was upset after daddy went to work. She cried, she stomped her feet and then she did something very unexpected. She said she wanted to take a nap. Bunny never says that.

So she laid on the couch with her favorite silky blanket and I covered her up with another blanket. She then laid there watching Word World, occasionally lamenting how much she missed her daddy.