Opinions

As I mentioned in my last post, we have moved into a new phase of parenting. Here’s an example of what we’re dealing with:

Me: We’re going to go bye bye. Let’s go.
Bean: Ummmm…nope.
Me: You don’t want to go bye bye? Why not?
Bean: CARS! *crashes his toy cars together on the floor*

Another example…

Me: *putting a shirt on Bean*
Bean: NOOO! No shirt!
Me: Come on buddy…you have to wear a shirt. It’s 20 degrees out.
Bean: THAT shirt! *points to his dirty dragon sweater in his hamper*

And another example….

Me: *place his lunch on the tray of his booster seat*
Bean: NO! Apple.
Me: We don’t have any apples, bubba.
Bean: Nana?
Me: You had a banana with breakfast. Why don’t you eat your green beans?
Bean: Ummm….nuh-uh. Juice?
Me: You have some milk in your cup. Let’s drink that.
Bean: No. Juice.

Yup, this is a typical day with the Bean now. He’s learning so quickly, he picks up 3-5 new words a day (and his Daddies have been AWESOME about making sure they’re all daycare appropriate words), he’s becoming more self sufficient but he’s also learned that he has options. And he has an opinion about ALL of them – from his clothes, to what he eats, to when he drinks, to what we’re doing at any given time.

There are days when it can be tiring. But, most of the time, we’re really enjoying seeing his personality and character developing. We’re also trying to teach him about choices now. For the most part, Jer and I don’t try to strong-arm him into anything (unless it’s something that impacts his health or safety – the big things).

For example: last night he wanted to color and stay in the living room to watch Yo Gabba Gabba. We don’t allow him to color anywhere other than the table because he’s still sporadically in the color-on-everything-around-me phase. So, he had to make a decision: did he want to go color in the dining room or did he want to watch Yo Gabba Gabba? In the end, he decided to color for about 15 minutes and then he was ready to go take his bath. He made the choice about which activity was more important to him and we avoided any tantrums by just saying “no” to one or the other.

With every development milestone, Jer and I try to spend some time talking about how we want to handle things. We both are agreed that we don’t want to spend our lives saying “no” to him. If he wants to pick his clothes (and they’re weather appropriate), where’s the harm? I definitely don’t want to be the parent that constantly says “BECAUSE I SAID SO” to Bean’s “why’s”. Maybe we’ll succeed and maybe we won’t but we both really want to give him the option of helping decide how things work in his life. We want him to have the safety and the freedom to express his opinions to us. We want him to know that, when we make a decision and we stick with it, we’re serious, there’s a reason for our decision and we’re not negotiating.

So, we’re working through this. :) It’s been a big adjustment to have this little man in our house offering up his opinion on almost everything. But I love it! He helps us pick what we’re cooking for dinner, what shirts we should wear (orange or red), whether we should turn left or right in the car (it’s always left currently), how many bananas we should buy (he answers two to every math-related question).

In other news, we are old and boring. This sums up our New Years Eve:

This was at 7 PM. The dogs were out for the night. Bean followed about 2 hours later (we let him stay up hoping he’d sleep in the next morning) and then we finally crashed about 10:30 PM.

Happy New Year, friends. 2012 is going to be full of choices. Here’s hoping we all make good ones, just like Bean! :)