Billie
Joined: 29 Apr 2000
Posts: 1206
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 More on Freddy-Li's Behavior
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I have been frustrated for a awhile now with the fact that rules do not seem to be transportable for Freddy. If the person who made or enforces the rule is not in the room, then the rule does not exist. Though my boys would also test boundaries at that age, for the most part, rules were (sometimes annoyingly) transportable. They insisted on following the same rules at home as at daycare (for instance, taking their shoes off at the door, even though that's not one of our rules). I think they internalized rules as being fact, with a clearer line between right and wrong, which I'm not sure Freddy is doing.
I have read some research that indicates when children are guided very gently towards good behavior, and are reminded over and over again without harsh consequences, they actually internalize the rule over time and begin self-governing. But when children are reprimanded, or scolded, or punished for breaking rules, they do not internalize the rule in the same way but only tend to follow it when the enforcer is present.
I'm guessing rule enforcement in the orphanage was swift and strong. And I wonder if our tighter boundaries at home have contributed to the problem in some way. She seems healthy and happy at home, but maybe she's rebelling at school, because she can get by with it. Maybe if we gave her more latitude at home, she wouldn't act out at school. (It's not like we're super strict with her by many people's standards, but we do expect more of her than we did of the boys at this same age.)
There are a number of things that we don't allow her to do at home, such as taking off her socks and leaving them lying around (because my beagle would eat them and puke them up) and pulling out her piggy tails and barrettes (because I get sick and tired of finding them in the vacuum cleaner), and taking her clothes off after we've dressed her. I have very little patience with having to wash an extra two or three outfits a day on my three-year-old fashion diva's whim (though I have no problem with kids getting dirty or wet while they play and needing to be changed).
The thing is, she accepts these rules easily at home, and listens well, and she's still vibrant and fun, so it's not like we've broken her spirit or anything. But maybe we expect too much of her? At school, she breaks all of these rules every day. She comes home almost every day without socks, with her hair in her face and her elastics and barrettes nowhere to be found, and wearing some other shirt than the one I sent her in, sometimes her backup clothes and sometimes someone else's clothes.
Perhaps she's just a clothes horse, but I get the impression that it has less to do with wanting to wear a particular shirt and more to do with seeing if she can get the teacher to do her bidding. And she is successful most of the time, at least where the one teacher is concerned.
Even with potty training, she got it at home very quickly and did really well at school as well, going a month or two without an accident. But then she started peeing her pants every day at school. She could be home for two weeks straight (like over Christmas) without a single accident (and it wasn't because we were reminding her or helping her or paying more attention to her--she would just go off and take care of it). But as soon as she was back at school, she'd start up again.
I got the distinct impression, crazy as this sounds, that she was doing it because she could, because nobody told her not to. At school, they get hugs and "don't worry, it was an accident" and they get to change their clothes, which seems to be her goal. Since nobody else was telling her not to do it, I did. I felt kind of bad about dredging up something that had happened hours before, and that I wasn't there to see, but I did it anyway.
When we came home with a plastic bag with wet pants in it, I had her take it downstairs to the laundry room. And I told her it's not OK to pee in her pants at school, that she had to use the potty there too, just like she did at home. And you know what? She stopped wetting her pants at school, just like that. She's not dumb, this one, she's just trying to figure out what she can get by with. Which I kind of admire her for.
I think we all need to get on the same page and present a united front, because I suspect she is a divide-and-conquer kind of girl. She definitely does it at home, and her one teacher alluded to her doing it at school as well. When DH scolds her or sends her into a time-out, if she manages to catch my eye, she'll burst into crocodile tears and run to me, beseeching me to rescue her from her terribly mean daddy.
I also think we need to consider being a little less strict at home (decide which rules are really worth sticking to and which ones we can give on—does it really matter if she wants to take off her socks or change her clothes ten times a day?). Perhaps if we have fewer rules at home, she won't be so hell bent on breaking all of our house rules while at school. I also think the school, her one teacher in particular, needs to be a little more strict with her--she doesn't seem to do well with too loose of boundaries. I think the other teacher, who is pretty tuned in to Freddy's ways, was relieved when we told her that we use time-outs at home and gave her permission to use them at school.
It's also possible that some or a lot of this stems from her inability to express herself well. Both the school district speech therapist and the private speech therapist have said there is nothing more they can do with speech therapy to improve her articulation--that she needs another surgery. We are seeing the surgeon next week and I'm anxious to get it scheduled. I'm a little worried that he may want to wait another six months or a year (they often do this surgery at age four, for some reason). I trust him to do the best thing for her long-term, but dread the thought of another year of stagnation when it comes to her ability to communicate.
Sigh. This parenting gig is hard. What's so hard is not the doing, but the knowing. How do I know what's best for Freddy-Li, what this little girl needs to be happy and thrive?
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 Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 12:06 pm
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