Tuesday!!! The Most Challenging Day Of The Week!

Many years ago, Billy, an eighteen month old boy, joined our day care. He was adorable, bright, curious and interesting, like many children are.

We also really liked his parents a lot. Interesting, charming, warm. Highly educated and both in creative work worlds.

Billy began his experience at the daycare as a happy, curious, friendly child. His parents established what seemed to be a perfect schedule, alternating his pick up and drop off every day. I.E. Dad brought him Monday morning, mom picked him up Monday night and dropped him off Tuesday morning while dad picked him up Tuesday night.

During the first three months, he seemed to change his behavior noticeably. He was losing his happy nature, was often crying, having difficulty being positive and pleasant with the other children and was even sometimes aggressive.

Because we were not getting meaningful input from the parents, we decided to record his behavior daily. At the end of three months, a pattern was clear. His most problematic and aggressive day was Tuesday. Initially we were unsure what that meant except we realized it was also true for most of the children.

What appeared to be happening is that everyone seemed really happy and cooperative on Monday as well as really pleased to be back with their friends. What occurred on Tuesday was more of a reflection on what they had been allowed to do over their previous weekend. So it was more challenging the rules and guidelines than anything else.

Any of these behaviors are not uncommon with toddlers but by the end of the second year, we were becoming concerned about the direction he was taking. Coincidentally, each parent had a business trip planned and a set of grandparents came to take care of him. 

When leaving the day care one day (also a Tuesday) the grandparents were horrified and hysterical when Billy left them and ran across the street while a car was coming toward him.

Fortunately, he was not hit, but the incident opened the door to what was happening in his life.
Billy’s parents had separated prior to enrolling him in our day care. This was vital information they did not reveal and in fact, they had deliberately arranged their schedule so we would not know what was going on.

We scheduled a meeting with them and helped them understand how difficult, confusing and damaging their silence and schedule was having on him.

We also provided clear guidelines for both parents to follow, they needed to be on the same page. Fortunately, they made a commitment to follow them and communicate with each other and our staff in a more productive way.

There are so many messages to take from this incident.

1.Parents must be consistent. Weekends are mostly less scheduled than week days, but behavior standards should still be expected.
2.Parents and caregivers need to believe in the same parenting philosophy and practice it.
3.This situation obviously had an extremely dramatic moment, but every child is confused and may be angry and fearful when their lives are not guided by clear directives and consistent expectations.
4.We are still experiencing those challenges in many different ways.
The reason this incident came to my mind was because this last Tuesday was so challenging. We are still seeing the same patterns with children coming back to day care having been through a very disorganized and exhausting weekend.

Make sure you are taking their needs into consideration, but do not forget what behavior standards are important to you.

Good luck!

Roughhousing? Seriously? With Toddler or Young Child?

I am blown away to find that parents are actually engaging in consistent daily roughhousing activities with their toddler or young child.

I have to admit that I do not believe it is an appropriate or beneficial activity between a parent and child at any age. However at these stages of life it feels somewhat cruel and possibly life altering.

1.Oscar’s parents explained this activity as a way of toughening him up.

2.Michael’s parents explained it as a workout between them.

3.Roger’s parents engaged in it to tire him out.

This activity took place every morning for an hour – rolling him off the back of the couch, throwing him in the air etc.

Or

For a similar time period at night involving crawling around on the floor, throwing him up in the air, tickling him for an extended period and continuing these activities until he was so tired he was closing his eyes.

Or

Another approach was play boxing and karate kicking, along with horse back riding. I am not clear on the duration in this case except that sometimes the child was so overstimulated he could not fall asleep. In this case the activity backfired on the plan of getting him to sleep quickly.

I can hardly believe I am writing this. Not only do I believe it is harmful in so many ways, but that the parents have so many other options of interactive activity to enjoy with their child that would be beneficial. How about dancing, exercising, running and sliding at the park, soccer etc. My second point is that if this activity takes place at night to induce a “quick sleep” in most cases, a totally exhausted or overstimulated child will probably not fall asleep quickly and may experience an interrupted sleep.

Also in the twenty four years I have been a care giver, these three children were the only chronic biters ever.

I now also speculate that these experienced activities could be an experience that could become a germ toward bullying since this is really a big person taking advantage of a small person. Could that be how the child perceived it?

I am sure that there are a lot of people who think this activity is a lot of fun and could not create negative results, I am not one of them.

I am curious to know if there has been any research done and its results. I was unable to find anything even related. I would love to hear from you if you are aware of any study.

Thanks for being a member of my blog family. Good luck with all your parenting challenges!