Discipline

And so it begins.

Up to now our discipline has really just been limited to mealtimes and the issue of throwing food. But Nicholas has started showing signs of understanding and remembering a lot more and so we figure it is time to start working on breaking bad habits and stopping others from forming.

This revelation came because we decided to start gently working on his thumb sucking and he picked up on it much more quickly than we expected. In the past couple weeks the thumb sucking has increased, going from just when he was tired to basically whenever his right hand wasn't otherwise occupied. So we started just gently removing his thumb when it didn't seem to be serving a purpose and mentioning to him that he shouldn't suck his thumb all the time. Our hope was just to keep it from getting worse. But he picked up on it really quickly and much more thoroughly than we had anticipated. Not that he has stopped (in fact it is at least as frequent as it has been), but he will look at us before he puts his thumb in, showing that he already knows that he isn't supposed to. And a couple times today when we asked him to take his thumb out he cried fake tears. We're trying not to make it a big deal, just gentle and casual intervention to start planting the idea that he doesn't need to suck his thumb. I'm not sure whether that is the right tactic or not, but we'll see.

But based on this experience, we've started trying to actively intervene on other behaviors we had previously figured he was too young to understand. So we have started to clean up toys when he is done with them, asking him to help and talking about cleaning up. And today when he threw blocks (throwing is a skill he mastered just this weekend) I started trying to lay the groundwork on what are appropriate things to throw. Right now I'm not sure how much he is comprehending.

This is going to be a long road.

On a random other note, Nicholas' other two molars are coming in. He was being an absolute pain in the butt all day and I was losing patience and then it occurred to me that the only other times he is this awful is when he is teething or going through a growthspurt, so I put Orajel on the sections of gum where the molars have been visibly starting to break through. And since he went from completely awful to a little cranky, I'm assuming that was the problem. This week should be fun. Thank goodness for daycare.

On a more positive random note, Nicholas learned to stack blocks today. He was working really hard at it and by the end of the day he could reliably stack one on top of the other. When he tries to add a third it only stays about 1/4 of the time. He doesn't understand soft touches and so usually accidentally knocks the second one off because he bangs the third one on top with such force. But he is trying and working on hand-eye coordination, so I am happy to encourage him.