Our two year old is always surprising us with how well he can articulate and express his feelings. He regularly tells us he's happy, sad, mad, frustrated and nervous. This is hugely helpful and we rarely have temper tantrums but it is challenging to address those feelings. I have yet to come across a resource which can tell me what to do when my 25 month old tells me to go away because he is mad at me. I am a fan of Janet Lansbury's website and think she offers some great advice but there isn't much of anything on there or anywhere else sharing guidance on this topic. I am flying blind here and probably making rookie mistakes so if you have something that works for you, or a psychology degree, or a brain that's functioning better than my tired one is please share!
One example, heading to a party last night LB told us he didn't want to go and was acting truly upset, not just the standard toddler pout used to get a reaction. We asked why and he didn't elaborate at first but after a few minutes LB told us he was nervous about the people. We talked through the people who would be there, how he knew them, when he saw them last and he seemed a little better but further pinpointed what was bothering him when he said "I don't want to give hugs and kisses". This is something he was always happy to do on his own without our encouragement (it seemed) and it's just the cutest so we started to encourage him and tell him each time we say hi and bye to give hugs and kisses (just as we do). Now I'm realizing we pressured our little guy to do things he wasn't always comfortable with. He is generally jovial and friendly (almost overly), he doesn't often act shy and is the first to give hugs to a new playmate so my Husband and I were caught off guard when he articulated this. It was the complete opposite of what he showed outwardly.
Thinking more about his declaration we realized we pressure him to do this ALL.THE.TIME, say "hi", say "bye", "give good-bye hugs" (to everyone at the party). Here we were thinking we were teaching him to be social and friendly, (following in our footsteps) but from his perspective clearly it seems overwhelming, which duh! Especially being a toddler learning to assert his independence. GREAT JOB ROOKIES :(
Working through this in the car we suggested he didn't have to give hugs or kisses unless he wanted to and could simply watch how we act in a social situation. We did however request he say hi to the people who say hi to him or when we ask him to because I think that is part of having good manners. We also suggested he could shake hands because he's already a pro and if we are introducing him to someone it's important to me that he learns early on about proper greetings.
LB ended up completely warming up to everyone (as usual) and realizing basically everyone there was a close friend of ours he knew quite well. I think he gave everyone he knew a hug and/or kiss goodbye on his own without prompting. So maybe he was uncomfortable not knowing what to expect at the party, maybe he doesn't like being forced in to hugs and kisses, or maybe he was just testing what would happen if he chose not to. Who knows but this definitely taught us more about our son and the strong feelings he is working to process as we take him with us to do our seemingly run-of-the-mill activities.
Have you had any of these odd or surprising moments with your kids? How did you handle them? Any enlightening conversations where you realized just how darn smart or grown up your little (but not so little) baby is?
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