Terrible twos and trying threes

When Sarath hit 2 years, everybody (especially parents of older kids) told us to be prepared for what’s coming next. The ‘terrible twos’. We were scared. But, he was the easiest kid on the block. He did have occasional tantrums but, they were so easy to control. It was a breeze. We always thought we were lucky to have an easy child.

But, that is not the case anymore. According to this teacher, he is entering the ‘trying threes’ phase. It is very tiring for a parent to deal with this. Everything is a battle now. Whenever we ask him to do something, the answer is a firm ‘NO’. Time-outs do not work as they used to. Sleeping is the biggest battle of all. It was always a battle with him. A few months back, he started to fall asleep by himself. We were so happy about that. Now, he is back to square one. It takes him an hour or more to fall asleep. I just like to tell myself that this is just a phase and it will soon pass. Hope that day is close.

We have started getting complaints from his day care saying he is not listening. Talking to him does not seem to help. So, we have decided to deal with it in a positive way. We praise him for all the good things he does – even the minute things. If he is good the entire day, we give him 3 jewels to put in his jar. I told him that when he earns 10 jewels, he’ll get a surprise. That seems to be working. Now, he counts his jewels every night before he goes to bed 🙂 Now, the tough part for me is coming up with a new surprise every time.

His teachers say that he is a very determined kid and I agree. But, my aim is to encourage his determination in a positive way. So, on the brighter side, now that he decided that he is a big boy and not a baby, he stopped wearing diapers to his day care. He does stay dry all day. He decided that all by himself. So, we tried that at home and he is doing very good. So, I am hoping he will be out of diapers by the end of the year 🙂

He is also determined to speak Telugu to me, his dad and his grandparents. So, if one of his grand dad’s talks to him in English, he does not talk to them. They just want to listen to Sarath’s English. But, no…. he firmly replies “naatho Telugu lo maatlaadu. nuvvu English lo maatladite, nenu maatladanu (Talk to me in Telugu. If you speak English, I will not talk to you)”. Me and DH are so proud 🙂

So, all this does have a better and brighter side to it. I am just realizing that this brighter side is what makes it difficult to be hard on him sometimes. I really want to be firm and stick to my rules but, I feel bad. After all, he is just turning 3. He is still a small kid. There are times when I just lose my temper and yell at him and feel bad later. There have been many of those bad mommy moments these days. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get through this phase as we did with all the other phases!

Any ideas and suggestions are welcome!

Also, I will post my Orlando trip details. It’s just that there are so many pictures, I was not sure which ones to pick and write a post. I will write about it soon before I forget the itty bitty details 🙂