little bird

For a few weeks now, we have been having a bit of trouble with our Little Bird. She has been extremely stubborn and throwing many endless tantrums. For a moment I didn't know what I was going to do and I thought she would be like this forever.

She has always been the one to know what she wants when she wants it. Now that her language is exploding, I thought the tantrums would cease (some) because she is able to communicate so well. Unfortunately something happened. She decided that she wanted to see how far she could take our power struggle.

It didn't help things that Daddy has been out of town or working really late for the past month. My patience can run very thin when I don't have any relief help. I didn't help Little Bird any by having little to no patience with her. 

Finally, when Daddy saw her throw a 30 minute tantrum because he gave her more milk instead of me, he realized how bad it's been. 

After trying all sorts of things to curb the behavior, I think I've finally found a tactic that works...at least for  now...and for some things. 

Little Bird is a very sensitive person. She takes things very seriously and any attitude you give her, she will take personally. So when I was using only time outs to try to stop some of her behavior (pushing, taking toys away, unwanted wrestling), it was only making her feel really bad. It didn't make her change her behavior.  She didn't like when I was upset with her and disapproved of her behavior. It only mad her more mad and act out more. 

On the other hand, when we praise her for doing good things, I can tell by the look in her eyes that she is taking it all in and her sense of pride is billowing. So, I figured that I would try to go over the top with the praise to really show her that that is the behavior I want to see all the time.

And it's worked...so far...for most things.

We have been drawing purple stars on her hands with a marker every time she is behaving well. Like, not waking in the night and crying for us, eating her meals without whining, sharing with Little Pie, not screaming in the car, being a good girl at Taylor's basketball games, etc. 

She LOVES receiving a star.

Showing off her stars.

She hasn't had a tantrum since we've implemented the star routine. It has also curbed the whining quite a bit. I'm glad that this is working for us right now and hope it continues to work. I was starting to get nervous that we were going to have a tantruming Little Bird on our flight to AZ. I think all the other passengers on our flight next week should give me a purple star!

Now, the only thing it doesn't seem to work for is getting her to take a nap. Or at least be quiet in her bed. I really need to figure out how to implement quiet time since nap time seems to be over. I have a feeling this one is going to be hard...