Good behaviour

Time flies and it's one and a half month into my maternity leave. What's keeping me really busy is not the younger old but the older one. 

While he has grown a lot more receptive to his younger brother , he has been regressing on other fronts in terms of behaviour i.e. Scratching and biting when things don't go his way or saying "I don't like you", "go away" etc. 

Yesterday, the emo Cayen suddenly told Ah Po that he felt that Auntie May (our helper) didn't like him anymore, because she didn't play with him anymore. Well the truth is that May has been helping with the baby the last two weeks so didn't have so much time to play with him. In any case, just like how he treated me, he would scratch her or tell her to go home /go back to Philippines when he didn't get his way. Hence, we told him that he needs to be nicer to her and stop saying those hurtful words else she would stay away from him. Not sure if he has absorbed that but we were certainly surprised that he had noticed these changes and verbalised his observations. Think we are dealing with a very sensitive kid here.

Anyway, to deal with his behaviour, we have been trying to reinforce better behaviour by reading all the good behaviour books. 

Yesterday I decided to also do a more visual rewards chart (as opposed to just pasting rewards stickers into sticker book). Actually I am super bad at arts and crafts , so it's quite a challenge to come up with something useful yet visually appealing. Took me some planning and browsing through rewards chart samples as I wanted to do an All-in-one version since there's so many things that he needs to learn to do better. 

In order to dissuade bad behaviour, I asked him to help brainstorm what constitutes bad behaviour that would cause the removal of earned stickers. Towards the end of the long list, we were getting a bit stuck when bemused Ah Gong chimed in and said that he shouldn't say 'Go Away' when other kids want to play with him, to which Cayen appreciatively replied "thank you" sincerely. We all paused and laughed out loud - it sounded almost sarcastic at that moment though he had truly meant it. 

Today, I also did some role play on asking for permission , about how sometimes the answer he gets could be a 'no' initially but if he's good at accepting it, then it will become a 'yes' eventually. So I made him  role play asking my permission for things and also (act the role of the little boy in the book) by apologising for not asking for permission. He was quite taken by this game and role played quite well. In fact, he asked me to pretend to ask him for permission and so I did. 

Me: May I have your shirt please? 
C: No
Me: Why? 
C: because it's too small .. (Haha!)
(Fast forward to tomorrow)
Me: May I have your shirt please? 
C: Yes
----
Me: May I have your bolster please?
C: No
(fast forward to tomorrow)
Me: May I have your bolster please ？
C: yes 
Me: why ?
C: because it's morning , I don't need it . (Logic is sound, haha) 

After doing it for a while, I think he became quite good at it and so we stopped. However, later on when he was trying to eat supper, he threw a fit when Ah Po gave him two instead of one biscuit. While it was easy to practise taking 'no' for an answer, it's so much more difficult for him to do it for real. But I tried to remind him of the concepts again once he calmed down. Looks like it's a long journey ahead. 

He has to earn ten stars for a mini treat and thirty stars for a big treat. 


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