Haven is a challenge. She is a sweet, smart girl that has a great sense of humor. But she is also very stubborn and a little defiant. I swear this girl is 2 not 20 months. There is a daily battle of wills with her and she spends a good amount of time in her time out chair. The two biggest issues I have with Haven is her jealousy of Alec and she is not able to keep her hands from touching things she knows she is not allowed to touch. She will tell me no touch and then try to unplug a lamp or something. We changed out the outlet covers so if she gets the plugs off she can't touch the live socket, but she is the type of child that would figure out if she moved it the right way she could. She is very smart and has very good dexterity and that adds to the issue. I find myself getting frustrated with her and I don't like that I feel that way. Every day I tell myself you will have more patience with her...some days are better than others. I know she is testing the waters and feels comfortable with us now... but I must admit the child that didn't challenge me every second of the day was easier to deal with.
She is extremely jealous of Alec. If he is playing with anything she thinks of as hers she comes unglued and starts hitting him. She can be very sweet and kiss him and give him hugs. She tries to help hold the bottle for him. Yesterday she got put to bed at 6:30pm because she was hitting him over the head because he crawled over to her favorite toy and started playing with it. This was after an afternoon of meltdowns and tantrums. I know this is normal behavior but give me a break.
I met with our pastor yesterday to discuss their baptisms and she threw a major temper tantrum because she didn't want to give the pencil back. I know every Mom has been through this, but it was embarrassing!! Thank goodness my Pastor is a Mom and Grandma to young children she helped scoop her up and get her in the car for me because I had Alec too. Ok I'm done venting. Thanks for listening, this stay at home Mom thing is so much harder than I thought it would be. I enjoy being with them, but some days she wears me out.
4 Kind Words:
Yeah! Got to love that stage which typically begins at about 18 months and stops when they move out at 18 :-) LOL!!!!!!
Hang in there, it will get better. Remove her from the area when she starts up..or divert the attention to something positive....she will get better..its the age and that she is feeling more comfortable with you, which is great!
Becky, I am going to recommend the book The Connected Child, by Dr. Karen Purvis. It was recommended to me by several other adoptive parents, and it has been a great resource. I have a child much like Haven only she's five... it only gets more challenging! My 20 year old son was also a challenging child, but the strategies you might use for an adoptive child can be a lot different than those for a kid that grew up with you from birth. I really can't recommend it enough.
Email me if you want to talk more. Hugs and good luck.
Becky,
I've had a couple of people talk to me about the Ethiopian Stubbornness factor and it sounds as if Haven has it times 2.
She does sound like a handful and I can only imagine how tiring it gets minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day.
Joseph is fine as long as he's getting his own way. We're working on timeouts and those seem to be most effective when Eric is doing it. He bit Luke yesterday because Luke was blocking his Wiggles show. Luke was a trooper about it, but we weren't. It was straight to timeout.
GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Deb
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