Multiparenting Cayen & Cayson

Scenario 1: It's been a long day and one of the last tasks of the day is to put the baby to bed. After trying for 30 minutes, Baby finally blinks and closes his eyes. Then without warning , he opens his eyes wide open despite being very tired and cannot go to sleep. Then you try to repeat the routine again. After 45 minutes, you are tired and want this to end. So you pick the baby up, rock him in your arms  / carry him around the house / put him in a pram and push him around / take him out for a drive. Then finally he goes to sleep. You conclude that this is a quick fix and is so much more effective. You should have done it upfront.  Scenario 2: After 45 minutes of trying to get the baby to sleep, he still is awake. In fact, he's crying loudly as he's tired and wants to sleep. You pick him up , stop the crying and put him right back into bed. He cries again, and you pick him up, stop the crying and put him back into bed again. This goes on for 30-40 times before he finally ...

Babies This is super tricky for young babies. Too much nap in the day , they can't sleep at night. Too little nap in the day, they will keep stirring at night too. So for Cayson now who's around 9 months old, he needs around 3-4 hours of day naps to sleep through the night from 7.30pm to 6am. Anything less, he is likely to stir through the night or wake up from 4am onwards.  4 year old Recently Cayen's behaviour has improved leaps and bounds, touchwood I believe the terrible 3 phase is over. We did a lot of things in the last one year -  rewards charts ,  incessant reading of books promoting good behaviour, role play , executive functioning classes and sleeping 1 hour earlier every night.  While there's occasional tantrum flares, usually I notice it's due to missing the day nap , or sleeping too late (past bedtime). As such, my hypothesis is that sleep is one of the key drivers to good behaviour because kids so young need enough sleep. I recall his peak tantrums kin...

I read some articles before on how we should be careful about how we praise a kid. Later on, I was also introduced to the concept of a Growth Mindset at Little Executive that also covers it. "Growth mindset is about having a mindset that allows insight to emerge from failures, resilience to be built from mistake and every misstep an opportunity to be better." - little executive's website  Hence, since then , I'm very careful with my choice of words with Cayen . I do not praise outcomes or how smart he is , but will always praise his efforts instead. And with every teaching moments that arise, I will emphasize that we do something well because we have practised very hard and we never give up.  For instance, I told him about how I tried the Yin and Yang yoga today and it's really tough for me since it's my first lesson. And he asked me if the others felt the same. I said no, they were much stronger than me. However, even though if I was not good today, I will no...

I went through an exercise with Cayen when I asked him to list down what activities he finds boring and interesting. Idea of the activity is to identify those items and discuss how we can make those activities more interesting so they can focus longer. First thing on his boring list is "Sleeping" , and naturally his suggestion to deal with it is to "wake up". * Gasps*  While I already guessed that this item will come up on his list, since he will tell us every other night that he "can't sleep" and it's boring, it still amazes me that he feels so strongly about it. Nonetheless, I think I can't blame him, because I recall that as a kid, I hate afternoon naps too as I think it's a waste of time. Power of genes.  Anyway, because it takes so much book reading to get him to sleep, I usually try to skive by telling him my own made up stories instead, using random themes.  So yesterday I decided to tell him story of Rupert the cockroach getting int...

His sleep routines used to 1-1.5 hours long. He would have his supper and come in  9pm. We would try to have him sleep by 10pm but sometimes it would drag to 10.30pm.  Recently in the last 2 weeks, the routine changed a little. I allowed him to come sleep on my bed as I was wondering if his constant coughing/phlegm was due to him sleeping on the mattress on the floor near the clothes.  Then, I tried to bring him down to the pool to swim, cycle or play after school for another 30-45minutes to further burn his energy.  Also, we would start his routine at 8-8.30pm before his supper. He would come out at 9-9.30pm in between but that's still fine.  Then, I let him help me turn on the humidifier / night light. And I turned off the other usual bedside light and made the room a lot darker. Lastly, I would ask him to go sleep after 3 books after his supper. Even though I could see that he couldn't really get to sleep, as he was changing positions every 30 seconds, I clos...

For the entire third month, Cayson could only take short naps during the day time , only 10-15 minutes each time and only a few times a day. It didn't help that the occasional times he slept was always interrupted by the renovation right above us.  Then, on Cayen's birthday on the 9th , as he was doing tummy time on the sofa, I gave him a hand when I saw him trying to rollover. I didn't realise that innocent flip was the start of a whole new era.  Since that night, he had been rolling over to sleep on his tummy. For the first two to three days, he was waking up every 15-30 minutes throughout the night. Then suddenly, for the next few days, his sleeping time suddenly increased in the day and at night while he slept on his tummy. Then, for the last few nights, he had been sleeping from 8pm to 3am and drifting back to sleep easily from 3am to 7am+. And he could take 1-4 hour daytime naps too.  So my light sleeper wasn't so light a sleeper after all - he just hasn't fou...

I've been down with flu the past week as the nightly awakenings hence interrupted sleep in the last month have taken a toll on my health, despite my efforts to compensate by sleeping in later.  This week, my helper covered my duties and I slept more regular hours. This also meant that I could send Cayen to school and be awake to play with baby Cayson when he's at his cutest and most vibrant time of day, chuckling and "talking" non-stop.  Not sure if it's by coincidence but Cayen's behaviour in school this week was the best in weeks.  A few things that's different this week:  - I sent him to school personally and would prep talk / role play with him in the car on what to do when his friend wants to play with his toys (correct answers: either ask for a bit more time to play or share the toys) , what to do if someone cuts his queue (right answer: to gently inform person that queue is behind him or just let it go) . These were the common triggers for conflicts...

This is the process after implementing the rewards chart to date :  Day 1 (Tue): he seemed excited , he talked a lot about the dos and don'ts (he even asked Ah Po to cook broccoli , peas and carrot every day so he can earn the veggie stars. However, it's all talk but no action Day 2 and 3: still a slow start but starting to earn the peeing and pooing stars  Day 4: brought him out for dinner to change the diet and hope he's more inspired to eat on his own.  And it succeeded. We had a smooth and fuss free meal of soup , garlic bread, pork chop and fries. Day 5: Ah Pa brought him to universal studio but he didn't understand why he's going so soon because that was supposed to be the reward after earning 30 stars. Well, that's the reason why I was dissuading Ah Pa from choosing that place but Ah Pa wanted to spend some quality time with him and so they went. Good thing was that he was on his best behaviour the whole day. Ate well and did the toilet thing well too.  D...

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 wer...

It's strange. They want to walk when they can only crawl but once they can walk, they want to be carried.  So to try to encourage him to walk on his own, I resorted to creating games on walking on certain coloured tiles or walking on the lines of the pavement so that he would walk voluntarily.  Millenia Walk is a good place to kick start the series of games as they have nice black and white tiles and not so much human traffic. So some variations are: - let's walk on the black tiles - let's walk on the White tiles - let's hop on the black tiles etc - let's cross the bridge (when you see a strip of a different colour) - let's run up or down the slope (when theres's slopes ..  So far, this has helped to increase his willingness to walk. Let's hope he can keep it up.  http://youtu.be/iLDSZVKJzsI