Columns for December 2012

Information

Potty Training not finished

Q:        This past August, when our son was a mere 22 months of age, it took him two weeks to learn to use the potty successfully. He was dry even at night. We were thrilled! However, now that the weather has turned cold, he has started wetting the bed every night and even during afternoon nap time. We tell him it’s wrong but he doesn’t seem to care. We even put his little potty in his crib but he doesn’t use it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

A:        Congratulations on potty training your son at 22 mos! Disposable diaper manufacturers do not want parents to know that just as it is easier to house-train a 4-month-old puppy as opposed to a one-year-old dog, it will be far easier to toilet train an intelligent human being at 22 months than it will be if one waits until said human is 36 months. As soon as this column appears, you should go into hiding.

However, I have to tell you that you’re letting your son’s success go to your heads. It’s premature by at least six months to expect consistent night dryness from a child of your son’s tender age. The fact that he was dry after periods of sleep for a couple of months is what I’ll call a temporary side-effect of daytime training. It was bound not to last. The other factor operating here is that boys are twice as likely as girls to be bed-wetters. No one knows why that is.

Then there’s the matter of the message you’re sending your son. If I put this gently, you may not get the point: you’re making a huge mistake by telling him that bedwetting is wrong. Reacting punitively is not going to help matters and is very likely to make the problem much worse. You’re also headed toward an ever-escalating parent-child power struggle. Being anxious and punitive about bedwetting sets a BAD disciplinary precedent.

Children who wet the bed have no conscious control over the problem. Without exception (that I’ve ever heard of at least), they are very deep sleepers who don’t “hear” their bladder telling them to get out of bed and use the toilet. So, they just release. When they wake up wet, they can’t explain it. That applies as well to older kids who still wet.

I encourage you to back off and wait until spring—not because of warm weather, but because he’ll be old enough by then to begin having success—maybe. I recommend a “waiting period” of no less than six months between daytime training and attempts to help a child learn nighttime bladder control.

Let him sleep naked from the waist down. That increases the likelihood that when he wets, he’ll wake up. For some unknown reason, that usually (but not always) promotes a quicker resolution to the problem.

And be sure to follow Johnny Mercer’s advice and accentuate the positive.

Q:        Our 7-year-old has always been a great, respectful, funny little kid. However, recently he started lying and become a little sneaky. We punished him by taking his television privilege away and making him write apology letters as well as apologizing over the phone to everyone he has lied to. We have explained to him that he is losing our trust and that we do not want to see this kind of behavior continue. Is this “typical” behavior for a 7 year old boy? What is an appropriate punishment and more importantly, how can we get him to stop?

A:        You’re doing the right thing, as in having him apologize to those he’s lied to and suffer other moderate consequences.

It is not unusual for children to experiment with lying, usually in the form of fabricating stories that haven’t happened. More often than not, the child in question is otherwise well-adjusted, like your son. Let’s face it, children do odd things, some more than others. It’s the nature of the species. This is most likely just a passing phase, something he’s experimenting with, seeing if he can fool people and what sort of reaction he gets when the lie is discovered.

Along those lines, it may be that he has discovered that this gets a rise out of you. In that event, this little glitch might continue for a while no matter what you do. The bigger a deal you make of it, the worse it’s likely to get. The important thing is to be nonchalant about this as opposed to bent out of shape. Attitude is everything!

Q:        We have an adult child who doesn’t want to grow up. She quit college after two years and moved across the country. As we anticipated, she’s having difficulty supporting herself. In fact, she doesn’t have a job and seems to have no real motivation to get one. Her mother, my husband’s ex-wife, thinks we should be sending her a monthly allowance to help with her rent and food. We have kept her on our health insurance, but feel that sending her money would equate to approving her poor choices and unacceptable lifestyle. What would you do?

A:        I’d do what you’re doing. Legally, you are under no obligation to support an adult child, and supporting an irresponsible adult child will only further delay her maturity. It may be what she wants, and it is surely going to make her life temporarily more comfortable, but it is not what she needs, not in the long run. Her mother is obviously addicted to enabling, and the girl is obviously addicted to entitlements. This is a toxic arrangment, one that you should not participate in. She isn’t going to learn how to deal with life’s realities if you make it possible for her to be both irresponsible and care-free.

Decisions of this sort are riddled with guilt and self-doubt. They are the toughest of parental decisions, in fact. Hang tough, and remember that life’s most valuable lessons are learned the hard way.

More on The Potty Plan

Q:        This past August, when our son was a mere 22 months of age, it took him two weeks to learn to use the potty successfully. He was dry even at night. We were thrilled! However, now that the weather has turned cold, he has started wetting the bed every night and even during afternoon nap time. We tell him it’s wrong but he doesn’t seem to care. We even put his little potty in his crib but he doesn’t use it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

A:        Congratulations on potty training your son at 22 mos! Disposable diaper manufacturers do not want parents to know that just as it is easier to housetrain a 4-month-old puppy as opposed to a one-year-old dog, it will be far easier to toilet train an intelligent human being at 22 months than it will be if one waits until said human is 36 months. As soon as this column appears, you should go into hiding.

However, I have to tell you that you’re letting your son’s success go to your heads. It’s premature by at least six months to expect consistent night dryness from a child of your son’s tender age. The fact that he was dry after periods of sleep for a couple of months is what I’ll call a temporary side-effect of daytime training. It was bound not to last. The other factor operating here is that boys are twice as likely as girls to be bed-wetters. No one knows why that is.

Then there’s the matter of the message you’re sending your son. If I put this gently, you may not get the point: you’re making a huge mistake by telling him that bedwetting is wrong. Reacting punitively is not going to help matters and is very likely to make the problem much worse. You’re also headed toward an ever-escalating parent-child power struggle. Being anxious and punitive about bedwetting sets a BAD disciplinary precedent.

Children who wet the bed have no conscious control over the problem. Without exception (that I’ve ever heard of at least), they are very deep sleepers who don’t “hear” their bladder telling them to get out of bed and use the toilet. So, they just release. When they wake up wet, they can’t explain it. That applies as well to older kids who still wet.

I encourage you to back off and wait until spring—not because of warm weather, but because he’ll be old enough by then to begin having success—maybe. I recommend a “waiting period” of no less than six months between daytime training and attempts to help a child learn nighttime bladder control.

Let him sleep naked from the waist down. That increases the likelihood that when he wets, he’ll wake up. For some unknown reason, that usually (but not always) promotes a quicker resolution to the problem.

And be sure to follow Johnny Mercer’s advice and accentuate the positive.

Sneaky Little Liar

Q:        Our 7-year-old has always been a great, respectful, funny little kid. However, recently he started lying and become a little sneaky. We punished him by taking his television privilege away and making him write apology letters as well as apologizing over the phone to everyone he has lied to. We have explained to him that he is losing our trust and that we do not want to see this kind of behavior continue. Is this “typical” behavior for a 7 year old boy? What is an appropriate punishment and more importantly, how can we get him to stop?

A:        You’re doing the right thing, as in having him apologize to those he’s lied to and suffer other moderate consequences.

It is not unusual for children to experiment with lying, usually in the form of fabricating stories that haven’t happened. More often than not, the child in question is otherwise well-adjusted, like your son. Let’s face it, children do odd things, some more than others. It’s the nature of the species. This is most likely just a passing phase, something he’s experimenting with, seeing if he can fool people and what sort of reaction he gets when the lie is discovered.

Along those lines, it may be that he has discovered that this gets a rise out of you. In that event, this little glitch might continue for a while no matter what you do. The bigger a deal you make of it, the worse it’s likely to get. The important thing is to be nonchalant about this as opposed to bent out of shape. Attitude is everything!

Adult Children

Q:        We have an adult child who doesn’t want to grow up. She quit college after two years and moved across the country. As we anticipated, she’s having difficulty supporting herself. In fact, she doesn’t have a job and seems to have no real motivation to get one. Her mother, my husband’s ex-wife, thinks we should be sending her a monthly allowance to help with her rent and food. We have kept her on our health insurance, but feel that sending her money would equate to approving her poor choices and unacceptable lifestyle. What would you do?

A:        I’d do what you’re doing. Legally, you are under no obligation to support an adult child, and supporting an irresponsible adult child will only further delay her maturity. It may be what she wants, and it is surely going to make her life temporarily more comfortable, but it is not what she needs, not in the long run. Her mother is obviously addicted to enabling, and the girl is obviously addicted to entitlements. This is a toxic arrangement, one that you should not participate in. She isn’t going to learn how to deal with life’s realities if you make it possible for her to be both irresponsible and care-free.

Decisions of this sort are riddled with guilt and self-doubt. They are the toughest of parental decisions, in fact. Hang tough, and remember that life’s most valuable lessons are learned the hard way.

Sudden Behavior Change

Q:        Our son started full-day kindergarten in September. For the first three months he had no problem with his behavior at school, but for the past few weeks he has gotten in trouble for talking, not listening, and he spit at a child at school today. Taking away privileges hasn’t made a difference in his behavior. He was always such a well-behaved child so we are at our wits end as far as what to do. Any suggestions for punishment would be greatly appreciated.

A:        Sometimes punishment is the answer for a classroom behavior problem; sometimes it isn’t. In this case, I am reluctant to recommend punishment (but I’ll go ahead and describe an approach that may work) because your son’s problems began rather suddenly after three initial months of good behavior. That’s certainly puzzling. It suggests that something happened—and is still happening—at school to cause this sea change in your son’s attitude. That intuition is strengthened by the fact that he’s never been a discipline problem.

Is the teacher young or inexperienced? Did some incident occur—an embarrassing one perhaps—in class on the playground that might have caused the other children to change their attitude toward your son? Is he being teased by his classmates? Did his best classroom friend suddenly decide to abandon him in favor of some other child? You first need to do a certain amount of detective work in order to determine if such an incident did occur. The fact that taking privileges away hasn’t worked to set your son back on the right path leads me to think there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

Sometimes a seemingly small event can rapidly cascade into a major problem. If so, then it may be that things have gone downhill to the point where a change of teacher, even a change of school, is called for—a fresh start, in other words.

When it can be determined that a classroom behavior problem is nothing more and nothing less than a classroom behavior problem, I generally recommend a consequence-based approach involving loss of privileges on “bad” school days. This requires that the teacher provide daily feedback concerning the child’s behavior. She can, for example, email a brief daily report to the parents at the end of every school day.

At-home privileges depend on a good report. The best results are obtained when the daily report involves no shades of gray. In other words, the child was either incident-free or not—and exactly what constitutes an incident must be defined clearly in advance. One such event results in the child losing all privileges—including television, all other electronic entertainment, and after-school activities. In addition, his bedtime is moved back at least one hour. Two bad days through the school week result in loss of privileges on the weekend.

The combination of daily and weekend consequences usually proves to be enough of a “persuader.” Sometimes, improvement is seen almost immediately; sometimes, it takes a few weeks. The secret, as always when the issue is discipline, is consistency on the part of both parent and teacher.

Play Date Shyness

Q:        My 5-year-old daughter loves to play with other kids her age, but has not yet asked me to invite any of her school friends over for a play date. According to her teacher, she’s a bit shy but plays well with the other girls in her class. And when the chance presents itself, she plays well with others in the neighborhood or friends from elsewhere. Should I go ahead and arrange play dates or let her make the first move on that?

A:        I have two somewhat opposing thoughts about this: First, if she were interested enough in play dates, she would ask you to arrange them. On the other hand, maybe she doesn’t know to ask or is a tad reluctant. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll be turned down. Tell her that if she wants, you will arrange weekly play dates for her. If she agrees, do so until she feels comfy enough to call and arrange them herself.