Elijah Feb2011 Update

Elijah is still goofy and silly and a ball of energy. He’s going from the minute he gets up in the morning, until the second his head hits the pillow at naptime or bedtime. And he’s a good sleeper too!We’re continuing to work on potty-training with Elijah, but it seems we’re finally getting somewhere! We went to underwear-only last July, and he did fairly well, although he didn’t have much control to hold it very long. His teacher at daycare was good about having him go frequently until he moved up to the preschool classroom in the fall. Then he wasn’t told as much, kept having multiple accidents each day – and then it became a control issue. So we backed off to pull-ups again, and decided to wait until he was ready. We think we’re there. He is going to the bathroom at daycare without being told, and is having fewer accidents. He’s also holding it longer, which is very nice. We started a chart, where he can get a stamp at bedtime if he’s been dry all day. He’s so proud of himself when he gets a stamp (and sad when he doesn’t), so it’s definitely a motivator. He usually has to tell me whether he’s been dry all day at daycare or not, because the morning and afternoon teachers aren’t the same. I have no idea if he’s being honest, but that’s OK, because it’s motivating him. He knows he has to stay dry in the evenings, and on weekends too, and he is for the most part. Even on Presidents’ Day, when we went to the Science Center with friends from 9:30-2:30, he stayed dry – and we made only one bathroom trip. I was so surprised! I was going to wait until Spring break to switch back to underwear-only, but if he keeps this up, it may be sooner!

Elijah is doing well at daycare, although we do have to have talks to him about once (or sometimes twice) a week about his behaviors. It seems that his behavior issues are many-times either a communication issue or a behavior copied from other kids in his class. Also, many times they are behaviors we don’t see at home, so often-times we wonder if he learned them by someone picking on him and he repeated to someone else – but because they laughed he just didn’t realize it was wrong so he wasn’t smart enough to cover it up or do it while a teacher wasn’t looking. Sometimes frustrating, but we’re getting through it with a lot of communication with teachers, and talks at home too.

Preschool-type learning is slow-going. We were told at daycare parent-teacher conferences that maybe he’d get more attention in the school system than he does at daycare. This kind of frustrated me. When we requested Elijah be moved up to a preschool classroom last fall, we chose the smaller of the two classes, with a male lead teacher, thinking that would be a better fit for him – more individual attention, etc. But apparently that is not the case, because some of the children with more problem behaviors are assigned to that class (and maybe the reason for the above?). I was disappointed to hear that he’s not getting much individual attention in a preschool class of 12-15 kids.

So we spent some time debating in the last few weeks what we should maybe do for him either at home or in a different setting for preschool next year. I struggle with knowing he’d be doing better if I were home with him, but he’d also not be socializing with other kids as much either, and me staying home is not an option right now. We’re going to keep working on preschool-type stuff at home on the weekends and some evenings. We have no plans for daycare/preschool changes right now, although other options are not completely off the table at this point yet either.At home, Elijah is mostly a joy. Elijah and Kaylen fight some – mostly of a competitive nature, which drives me nuts. Sometimes the competition is productive, and sometimes it is dangerous, so we have to try to find the balance. Elijah & Josephine fight some – mostly over teasing each other and lack of sharing toys, which most of the time earns them both a time-out. When they’re not fighting, Elijah loves to play with his cars and trucks, and also with whatever the girls have out at the time (tea sets, babies, dress-up, etc).He loves to watch movies – good luck getting his attention if the television is turned on – although that’s not very often. He loves to help out with various things – his common household chores are helping set the table, and cleaning the bathroom floors. He’s good at picking up toys too – if he knows we’re watching and he can’t get away with playing instead. :)