wendyroo
-
Posts
4,297 -
Joined
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by wendyroo
-
-
2 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:
Conditioning tends to be deliberate and repeated. It's not the same as a single or involuntary expression.
So does that mean you would not deliberately try to get a baby to stop pulling your hair?
You would rather allow them to continue unknowingly hurting you rather than risking scarring them by letting them know their action was causing you pain?
-
1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:
Rebellious isn't a word that belongs in a sentence about a baby, IMO.
Babies don't/can't 'rebel', just as they don't/can't 'manipulate'. This is where I see a cross over with the Pearls, despite the lack of physical coerciveness.
So you have never experienced a 6-9 month old baby look right at you, get a gleam in their eye, and dump their plate off their high chair tray just to see how much it riles you?
You have never had a baby specifically look to see if you are watching before they make a grab for the remote control?
Of course babies can manipulate. Learning how the world works, how people react, and how to make things happen is their primary survival goal the first year.
-
4 minutes ago, Corraleno said:
You keep trying to frame this as if the only two alternatives are a rather Skinnerian approach to controlling infants and young children or letting them grow up feral, and that's just not remotely true. Plenty of parents manage to raise happy healthy babies without treating them like subjects in a conditioning experiment.
You didn't answer my question.
Is it "conditioning" a baby to show them that it hurts when they pull your hair or bite when nursing?
I would say yes, that any disapproval of their action is conditioning.
But I also don't see how it could be emotionally healthy for either mom or baby to let them pull and bite and hurt you without letting them know.
-
1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:
Maybe it's OK that they will dislike having their nappy changed.
Of course it is okay if they dislike it.
But can't it be okay for them not to dislike it?
One of my young toddlers didn't like pulling shirts over his head, so I suggested trying button shirts and he liked those a lot more. But it almost sounds like you are saying I selfishly "trained" him to wear button shirts because I didn't want to deal with his authentic, age-appropriate dislike of pull on shirts. No, I just showed him another way of getting the necessary job done and let him choose.
I show my babies a faster way of getting their diaper changed. But I never take away their choice to do it the slow, rebellious way. Yes, I'm sure they know which way I prefer...but I maintain that even moms are allowed preferences.
-
5
-
-
1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:
The 'everyone' is mostly the parent.
See, I think it was far less stress for the baby.
A baby who willing lays still for a diaper change because they understand the consistent routine, can play with toys, listen to music, interact with mom. And it is over quickly.
A baby who spends the whole diaper change trying to roll away, will just be frustrated and upset every single time that they can't have their way. Because even if they are safely being changed on the floor, at some point you have to keep them there long enough to change the diaper.
-
5
-
-
3 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:
The or-else is the communication of parental disapproval via the mechanism of 'no more song'.
I mean, that's the whole point of doing it, right?
I can totally see that some people feel the or-else is worth it.
My personal feeling is that it was never worth it with an infant.
What is the magic age?
Are we allowed to let our 6 month old know that pulling our hair hurts? Or is that "parental disapproval" of the behavior so we should suck it up and love every single thing they do no matter what?
Or what about when they bite when nursing? Conventional wisdom is to unlatch them for a few minutes. But that could seem like rejection...so would you advocate letting them bite so they don't think we disapprove?
Strap them in the car seat to take the 3 year old to school? Some babies might experience that as rejection.
Put them down so you can make yourself a quick lunch? Never worth the possibility they might think you are disciplining them.
Where does it end? And when do anyone else's wants/needs/feelings enter into the picture even a little bit?
-
8
-
-
3 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:
I’ve NEVER felt the need to train them to obey or else.
Obey or else...I will stop singing for a moment and we won't be done with the diaper change as quickly.
Except, how long the diaper change takes is largely up to them, not me. So it taking longer isn't even under my control.
And my singing is just meant to allow them to perceive whether their behavior is delaying the process of not.
If I had had a baby who continued to roll away for the entire time they were in diapers, then I would have continued to patiently wait each time until they settled down and I could finish the job. It would have been far less pleasant for both of us, but its not like I would have started spanking or duct taping them down to force my will on them.
I was offering them knowledge and agency. Here is how long this annoying task will take. Here are some behaviors that will make it faster if you so choose.
-
5
-
-
11 minutes ago, Terabith said:
I have had multiple psychiatrists say that the genetic testing results aren’t really any better at predicting responses to meds than chance.
Our psychiatrists also felt it was mostly useless. We did do the testing on Elliot as a very last resort, but what the testing shows has had no logical relationship to the actual efficacy that we have seen with various meds.
-
3
-
-
1 minute ago, Sneezyone said:
You have no idea at 12 weeks. None.
I don't understand. Are you saying that using special ed techniques on a ND 12 week old would be okay in your mind, but using them on a NT 12 week old would not?
I honestly don't follow what your NT/ND argument is about.
I obviously did not know for sure that my 12 week olds were ND...though there were some very strong clues. But I would have taught them behaviors to make our day to day functioning run more smoothly whether they were NT or ND.
I don't understand any possible downside to teaching babies how to anticipate frequent events. We had bedtime routines, nursing routines, diaper changing routines and going in the car routines. None of those were to prepare me for the event - I knew what was happening next - it was all to help them learn what time it was, what needed to happen, and how long it would last.
-
5
-
3
-
-
2 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:
12 WEEKS!! WHO TF knows their kid is NT/ND at 12 weeks??
NT as in neurotypical? None of my kids are neurotypical, not even close.
-
2
-
-
58 minutes ago, Drama Llama said:
So, I can be both gentle (because yelling or punishing isn't an option in a school setting) and very persistent. Maybe that's why it worked for @wendyroo too.
I started teaching my kids to play on a blanket when they were 6-9 months old.
But even babies much younger than that can be "trained"/taught.
Around 12 weeks I started teaching my babies to lay still for diaper changes. I always sang the alphabet song while changing diapers, and made sure the song ended right as I finished. When they started to get more mobile, and tried to roll away while I changed them, I would stop singing, patiently wait for them to stop struggling, and then cheerfully start singing again as soon as they were still for even an instant. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As Drama Llama said, it took consistency and persistence, but all of my babies quickly figured out that I would not let them leave until I got to "next time won't you sing with me", and that the fastest way to get there was to lay still for a couple minutes.
Obviously they all got annoyed with me during the teaching process, but then it removed SO MUCH conflict for the next year+. It empowered them in the same way adults are by an "Approximately 1 hour of waiting from this point forward" sign or a "Now being served" number at a deli. Neither of those reduce the wait time, but they both allow you to come to terms with it and plan how you are going to occupy yourself.
-
9
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, Melissa Louise said:
But why wouldn't you just play with the baby on the rug?
Sorry, I know I sound dense, I just don't get the effort re. training.
I feel like training a baby requires a level of independence that babies just don't have.
Because sometimes life does not entirely revolve around the baby.
Sometimes I need to listen to a doctor as they give me instructions for medicating an older child. Sometimes I’m at a pre-natal appointment and need to be on the examine table for a few minutes. Sometimes I need to talk to a banker about setting up an account.
My children ARE my life, but I only have a finite amount of attention. Sometime I can only give a small child enough attention to keep them safe, not enough to keep them entertained. That is why I put so much effort into helping them learn to entertain themselves from early on.
-
10
-
-
Just now, Melissa Louise said:
Yeah, mine always came with me to appointments too.
But how did you train?
I'm stuck on that word. Did you give treats or something?
The only way I can conceive of training without punishment is training by reward.
I do understand having a special set of toys or books or whatever that come out in tricky moments, and verbal encouragement to play.
I guess training by consistency and perseverance.
I started as soon as they could easily sit up. At that age they were still sitting in the stroller during appointments, but starting to get restless.
At home, at a time they were well fed and rested, I put them on the towel (the exact one I would be using in offices), gave them some special toys, and sat next to them interacting. When they went to move off the towel, I would just move them back and cheerfully tell them, "Play here for now." I would aim for 5 minutes to start.
We practiced every day...while I read the kids a story, while I discussed a bill with DH, while I wrote a grocery list, etc. Over time I increased how long I aimed for, and then moved from being on the floor next to them to being in a chair next to them.
Once they understood the concept, then I mostly just needed to occasionally remind them. I would also bring back-up toys if they needed something new to play with mid-appointment. If they decided to push the boundary and leave the towel, then I would first remind them and ask them to come back, and if that wasn't enough then I would hold them on my lap. If they were happy, that was fine. If they tried to get down, I would remind them they needed to play on their towel or I would have to hold them again...and I would always follow through, not harshly, but sympathetically and matter of factly.
It was certainly not always smooth sailing, but we got a lot of practice and could almost always accomplish the necessary task of the appointment with only minimal strife on anyone's part.
-
5
-
-
2 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:
I just don't know how you can teach a baby to stay once they are mobile without punishment of some kind (I understand you could encourage different types and areas of play).
Those aren't the only options though.
Blanket train, screen or they ruin the house and you get mad.
I've cared for many babies, mine included, without those options.
Babies - you supervise them, you pick them up, you distract them, you carry them, you interact with them, you breastfeed them (mine only!), you sing to them, you talk to them, you save tricky tasks for when they sleep...
But we weren't in our home. Obviously at home I could modify the environment, but I had limited options in medical offices.
And, while obviously I was always supervising my children during appointments, my attention needed to primarily be on the appointment, not actively distracting, interacting with or singing to my 9 - 15 month olds.
They were welcome to sit in my lap...but they normally didn't want that for long. And I couldn't schedule all appointments around nap times.
Currently we are in psychiatrist/therapist offices about 7 hours every week. Back then it wasn't quite that high, but it was still a lot of hours stuck in offices. Plus, all the other appointments. I never had child care, so I always had to drag all of my kids to my pre- and post-natal appointments, my dental appointments, my banking appointments, etc.
-
3
-
-
Just now, Corraleno said:
You smack them, preferably with a thin switch or rubber hose or glue stick, so it leaves minimal bruising that could get you in trouble. Or, if you're a super nice, nonabusive mom, you can just tell at them every time they dare to put a finger over the edge. Eventually they get too scared to move off the blanket and — voila! — you have a perfectly trained baby you can ignore while you do other things.
Is that also the only option for teaching babies and toddler to not stand in the bathtub, to not bite other people, to not throw their food, etc?
Because somehow I taught my older babies/young toddlers all those things without hitting or terrifying them.
The thing I find really amusing, is that, as I said, I mostly had my older babies and toddlers play on blankets while in psychiatrist and therapist offices. And the only feedback I ever got from the medical profession was hugely positive. They heartily endorsed having kids play within clearly marked boundaries as opposed to A. plugging them into screens to keep them quiet or B. not giving them any boundaries and then getting mad at them when they touched things they weren't supposed to.
-
7
-
-
1 hour ago, Melissa in Australia said:
I just used a pram in those situations. I never put a baby on a floor of a doctors office or waiting room.
My youngest HATED being confined to a stroller when all the big boys were "free". It was fine when she was an infant, but once she could sit up, she wanted to move and play.
Plus, most of these offices were like 150 square feet (14 sq. meters) and had desks and chairs and bookshelves to work around. Add two adults and 4 children who had to hang out for an hour...space was limited.
Each child had a mini backpack that could hold a few toys or books. As soon as we walked in, I would assign places for each child - normally me and the violent, unpredictable 5 year old sitting on chairs or the couch next to each other, and the other three sitting on their towels. I would put the 1 year old's space right next to me.
It wasn't ideal, but it was one way of coping with a hard situation...and I don't think it did anyone any harm. Honestly, we still use it to this day. During my 10 year old's violin lesson, I lay out a towel on the floor to define my autistic, ADHD 7 year old's play area to make sure she isn't making too much of a mess, straying around the teacher's house, or getting in the way of the lesson. The towel helps her regulate herself physically and emotionally and greatly decreases how often she interrupts the lesson.
-
5
-
1
-
-
3 minutes ago, annandatje said:
Why go to effort of training infant to use blanket when you can put them in a playpen with no training required? How and why is blanket training preferable to a playpen during read alouds? I ask because I’ve never known anyone who did blanket training.
I "blanket trained" my younger kiddos (without ever spanking or threatening them in any way) because my oldest two special needs kiddos had many, many appointments. DH was at work, I had 1, 3, 5 and 7 year olds, and we had to spend a lot of time in psychiatrist and therapist offices. I could not have toddlers trying to ransack the office while I paid attention to the appointment. For me, the easiest solution was to teach the youngest two to each play with their toys on a small towel. It wasn't punishment at all, it was just a physical boundary showing them their play space in whatever office we happened to be in.
-
19
-
-
We use AAS plus Daily Grams to cover writing minutia like abbreviations and addressing envelopes.
-
1
-
1
-
-
3 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:
Agree that it doesn’t matter who checks as long as missed problems are reworked. This does not happen in my son’s school. No corrections to HW. Teachers have office hours, but there are 15 kids there for 30 minutes of help and athletes have to miss practice in order to attend OHs.
When kids are not motivated to learn, school is just box checking and doing enough to get by. Sad reality.
My son in public school has been in Algebra for 3 weeks now...and the only grade he has gotten so far is for getting his parents to sign the syllabus. He got 100%.
So 3 weeks in, us, his therapists, his special ed teacher, and even his algebra teacher have no real way of knowing if he is doing the work, understanding the concepts, losing assignments, etc. All of his other core classes have had at least one graded assignment each week, and he has turned almost all of them in late if at all, which is a known issue addressed on his IEP due to his autism, ADHD and anxiety. So I think we can assume that he is missing an equal amount of math work, but there is no data to back that up.
I'm not particularly concerned for my son because I think the vast majority of the assigned work is busy work of far less rigor than the algebra curriculum I took him through 2 years ago when I was still homeschooling him. But 3+ weeks of not understanding concepts is a huge hole for a less mathy kid to climb out of if parents are just glancing at the LMS and seeing their math grade as 100% (for getting that syllabus signed) and assuming that means all is well.
-
3
-
-
In high school we always had the answers in the back of the book to all the odd problems. Some math teachers only assigned the odds, others assigned a mix of odds and evens. We always spent the first 10-15 minutes going over a couple HW problems from the night before that the teacher chose (the ones he/she felt would cause the most problems) and any that students requested. Some teachers glanced at HW daily to mark for completion, others just randomly chose a day every couple weeks to check if HW was completed.
My one public schooled kiddo is in 7th grade taking algebra 1, and the system is very different. They don't have a textbook. Their class starts with a lesson created by the teacher, then they have small group work time, then partner work time, and then an assignment in IXL. They only have homework if they don't reach mastery on the assigned IXL. I pretty much hate it. Everything he is learning is sooooooo plug and chug. If the lesson is solving two step equations (which the school testing shows he had mastery two full years ago), then he spends small group and partner time teaching the others how to do it so that the teacher can give everyone passing grades. Then IXL makes him crank through 50ish rudimentary two-step equations that don't even increase in difficulty over time. The one time he did not understand a concept, he just kept randomly plugging numbers into IXL until he figured out the pattern well enough to guess adequately to reach the passing threshold. For better or for worse, he never has homework.
-
4
-
-
49 minutes ago, GoodnightMoogle said:
Thank you all! Now I’m on to overthink about handwriting for a while. 😄
My favorite is Universal Handwriting for my kids that hated handwriting, and were a touch delayed in fine motor skills, but made steady progress once they were ready. It is just so easy and open-and-go. I especially like that they offer the books in Spanish - we start Spanish exposure early, so this was an easy way to incorporate it into their day.
For my youngest who REALLY, REALLY struggles with handwriting and spelling, I use a combination of Spelling U See and Handwriting Without Tears, but those would have been overkill for my other kids.
-
1
-
-
I would do AAR.
Kid 1 went through AAR Pre-level, and then I bought the AAR readers. He caught on quickly and never needed any more reading instruction that that, but when we introduced spelling, we went right to AAS and stuck with it all the way through. Big fans.
Kids 2 and 3 followed that same path.
Kid 4 came along and needed more reading support. I decided to buy LOE, because like you I thought it looked thorough. I found it annoying to implement; DD found it torture even though I quickly gave up on the handwriting aspect of it. We gave up after a month and I just taught her to read on my own using the AAR readers.
I understand the appeal of handwriting or copywork included, but it never would have worked for any of my kids. Their fine motor skills were always delayed far behind their reading. Plus, hand writing was just plain despised, so when they were ready my only hope of getting semi-willing compliance was making my own handwriting/copywork sheets about high-interest topics: Star Wars, Pokemon, Plants vs. Zombies, Octonauts, etc.
-
1
-
-
The ULAT offers immersion video lessons at a very reasonable price.
-
1
-
-
18 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:
Lots of reasons possible but the most obvious and likely is that most parents have to be at work by 8. Logistic of buses (and is there anywhere that doesn’t have a bus/driver shortages?) means they have to drop off earlier so buses can make a second route. Elementary schools might have before and after care programs, tutors, extracurriculars, breakfast programs…
My public schooler is on the bus for about an hour each way (to a school that is a 2.5 mile drive from our house). So in my experience, a 7:25 drop off means kids are getting on the bus quite a while before most parents need to leave to get to work at 8. Obviously it could be very different in other areas.
Blanket training
in The Chat Board
Posted
But why do babies need to pull hair?
If as soon as baby tries to grab your hair, you gently move their hand and say, "No thank you, that hurts." and then give them something else to play with, then they can just learn to not pull hair. And then every person in their life doesn't have to keep their hair up because baby just knows not to pull hair.
I wear glasses. I could not afford to have my babies yanking my glasses off my face constantly and dropping them. It really was not that hard or coercive to teach them that glasses are not for touching. According to your model, it would have been better parenting to switch to contacts so that the environment didn't offer that temptation...and I honestly don't know if it would have mattered that contacts make my eyes red and infected. It seems your world view doesn't give a shit about my eye health if it can safe my baby from the slightest boundary or disapproval.