From Twitter: Eleanor’s been drawing an X in the upper right corner of her pictures because that’s how you close your window. Too much computer time.

Some of you may have heard me characterize our kids as “high-maintenance”. I say this because as they get older we have noticed that they are very particular and get very upset when things aren’t exactly the way they want. In fact, Bernard and I joke that they theme song for our parenting experience is The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, which we sing to them often–to their annoyance. The grandparents claim that the problem is giving them too many things and choices, but when I thought about the things that upset them, it doesn’t really have to do with material items or choices. Here’s a sample list of meltdown-producing events:

1. The five-pointed star I drew for Eleanor was not perfectly symmetric.
2. When I put the lid on Miranda’s cup, the hole for the straw was not perfectly lined up with the lion on the cup.
3. I went out of turn when playing baseball with them.
4. We forgot to let Eleanor set the table for dinner.
5. I used all capital letters when writing their names, instead of capitalizing only the first letter.
6. When I put toothpaste on the toothbrush, part of the toothpaste was slipping off the side.
7. When I cut out Miranda’s flower drawing, I didn’t cut on the line.

This list could go on ad infinitum. And these events produce full-blown whining and crying. They’re also hard to predict, and therefore, hard to avoid. I became depressed, thinking, “Why are my kids so unhappy with me all the time?” Then, I changed my thinking to “Fine, they can be upset, but crying about this kind of stuff is inappropriate and rude.” So we started giving time-outs for this behavior. Soon, we were giving five time-outs a day, and feeling even more frustrated because it wasn’t working. Basically, they would start whining and crying about something, then we would warn them that if they didn’t stop they would get a time-out, and this would just turn the whining and crying into full-blown fury–kicking, screaming, throwing things and spitting. This would prolong the time-out, i.e. turn a three minute time-out into thirty minutes because they wouldn’t calm down. I was really close to using corporal punishment, and even talked to my mom about how to implement it. (This would have been called the “I’ll give you something to cry about” method.)

This week, I decided to try a different approach. On Sunday, we went to the grocery store and the kids said they wanted a balloon. They’ve actually never seriously asked for any material object before, and I said no, since I didn’t want them to think that they could get something every time we went to the store. But this led me to think, “How can they earn a balloon?” So, I created a reward chart on a magnetic white board. The kids wrote their names and the days of the week. I drew a picture of a crying face and told them that if they didn’t whine or cry, they could get a magnet, and if they collected enough magnets, they could get a balloon at the end of the week.

The kids understood the concept right away and the behavior change has been dramatic. Now, if they start to whine, I just say in a matter-of-fact voice, “So I guess you don’t want a magnet”, and they stop! I specifically haven’t said how many magnets they need to get a balloon since I wasn’t sure how this was going to work. On Tuesday, Eleanor couldn’t stop crying about how Miranda got two turns for hitting the baseball in a row, so she didn’t get a magnet. (She didn’t accept my reasoning that she had had three turns in a row before Miranda decided that she wanted to hit the baseball too.) After she stopped crying, she looked sadly at the chart and the empty space under Tuesday in her row.

She then drew an “X” through the crying face, and next to it, a happy face (with hair), and I told her she could try to get a magnet the next day. So far, Eleanor has three magnets this week, and Miranda has four. I think I will let them have a balloon for four magnets a week since I think Eleanor can earn one today.

Initially, I wasn’t sure this was going to work, since behavioral psychologists usually recommend using reward charts for positive behaviors like picking up shoes, setting the table, brushing your teeth, not avoidance of negative behaviors like crying or whining. Then, I thought about what I say to parents about kids who bedwet. They get a star in the morning for not wetting the bed at night. Anyway, so far, this has made life much more pleasant so we’ll continue it for now.

We had a couple of warm days this week where the temperature got up into the upper eighties or low nineties. It was the first time since last summer that I had asked the kids to pick out short sleeve shirts to wear. Today, temperatures cooled back down to the low seventies. I told Miranda and Eleanor that they should pick out long sleeve shirts again. I had to explain to them that today was going to be colder and that they had to wear long sleeve shirts if they didn’t want to be cold.

After they got dressed, we were starting to head downstairs, and Eleanor suddenly said, “Daddy, you’re wearing short sleeves! You’re going to be cold.”

ME: “I’m not going outside later. I’m going to stay inside, so I won’t be cold.”

ELEANOR: “But how are we getting to school? I can’t drive.”

ME: “I’ll take you to school, but after that, I’m going to work and then I stay inside all day.”

ELEANOR: “At school?”

ME: “No, at work. I go to work after I drop you off at school.”

ELEANOR (after thinking for a moment): “Who will pick us up from school?”

ME: “Mommy will.”

She seemed satisfied with that. I wonder, though, if she really thinks that I don’t go outside at all during the day. Maybe I should have just said that I don’t get cold as easily.

From Twitter: A kid knocked Miranda over as she was walking to the pool. She cried for the entire 30 minute lesson. The teacher thought it was the lesson.

We took the kids to Disneyland yesterday with Agnes’ cousin and her family. It went fairly well. Some of our past trips to Disneyland have been short, but we stayed a good part of the day this time. When we got home, Eleanor pulled out some crayons and started drawing.

Eleanor called this a Mickey Mouse Tree and asked me how to spell “Mickey Mouse”. She then drew one for Agnes and me to color (black Mickey Mouse and brown trunk). I don’t know what a Mickey Mouse Tree is supposed to be, but maybe Eleanor was influenced by the topiaries around Small World.

We just posted the February 2009 photos.

Over the last month since we posted the January 2009 photos, the kids have had their emotional ups and downs. When Eleanor gets particularly frustrated, she loses her ability to say something coherent and usually comes up with “glah-glee!” We asked her what it means, and she says, “It means nothing.” We tease her about it, and she understands that it doesn’t really help to say it.

Earlier this month, we went to Legoland for a second visit. We had leftover tickets from our trip over Christmas, and they expired at the end of March. While we were there, Eleanor had a meltdown over lunch. I think it had something to do with not splitting her banana precisely down the middle of the tip (which is next to impossible to do without a knife). Actually, she melted down more because she was overly tired and hungry, but that wasn’t the trigger. I was ignoring Eleanor and letting her cry on the floor when a woman came by and asked if she had to listen to “that”. She said that our daughter was bothering the people around us. I took Eleanor outside after that, and a few minutes later, another woman came by and said that we weren’t bothering them and that she had no idea who the first woman was. I was a little surprised by both women. Usually people leave you alone to be a parent in whatever way you see fit.

Over the last week or so, Eleanor’s been doing much better though. Miranda, on the other hand, gets into moods where nothing satisfies her. We find that we just need to ignore her until she settles down again.

Eleanor and Miranda have learned to play rock-paper-scissors this month. You can rely on Miranda to almost always choose rock, and Eleanor to almost always choose scissors. After figuring this out, Agnes started routinely beating them. Eleanor tries to delay choosing by just a moment, but it doesn’t seem to help.

The girls also learned to play tic-tac-toe, but they have no ability to plan ahead. If they win, it’s because they stumbled into it. They seem to enjoy it though. If they start to recognize how to plan ahead, we’ll introduce them to Connect Four.

We’ve been trying to guide the kids towards asking for things and using “please” rather than saying “I want…” It’s working for the most part, but they still require lots of reminders. There are also times when their words just come out strangely and you wonder how to ask them to reword it. Recently, Miranda asked, “I want help for zippiny this please”. She was asking for help in zipping her jacket.

We’ve continued to let the girls play computer games after dinner. Eleanor has become particularly proficient at them. She can play a Yo Gabba Gabba game that uses the keyboard to move back and forth and jump. I don’t think she would be able to play a Mario Bros game though–she would get too rattled if she were under pressure.

We also recently bought a wall clock and we use an analog clock display on the computer. While the kids can’t tell time, we let them know how long they can do something by telling them that we need to do something else when the long hand reaches a particular number. It seems to work well enough, and it’s starting to address issues we previously had with transition where either Eleanor or Miranda wouldn’t feel like they had enough warning about a time limit.

Hopefully, the March pictures will be up shortly.

Eleanor has been sticking her rear-end out and saying, “Look at my big booty!” Little does she know, she’s a skinny little girl with no butt.