Anonymous wrote:Find your inner Elsa and sing it with me........ "Let it goooooooooo!" Embrace the absurdity, insanity, and utter mayhem that is this age. Adapt to the kid you have.
Okay, part of it is having a halfway-easy kid. Another part is after a decade of high pressure work, I quit and worked at preschool for the entire year before DS was born so I had a decent idea of what I was getting into.
I just keep our schedule very minimal. We don't do classes; we attend gymnastics open play or go to the low-key music get-togethers at the church behind our house. If we're late, no one cares because the whole point is you can come and go at any point. I go with the flow: if DS is in a good mood, well rested, fed, we can get lots done. If he's not.....well, usually we can get at least one errand done, so I am planning for one outing a day and anything else is gravy.
We play outside ALL THE TIME. Get weather-appropriate gear. Being outdoors is like magic with my kid. Yes, some times I would rather not be running circles in the yard for the 7th day in a row. Oh well. And fortunately he's still at the age where riding the bus or metro qualifies as "coolest thing ever" and so he behaves (and we can kill a bunch of time riding to no where in particular).
If he wants to tantrum that his favorite dinosaur socks are dirty.....have at it. The end result is still going to end up in the red socks. Sometimes offers of hugs and snuggles fixes things. Other times I just have to ride it out and do my best not to acknowledge the little petulant terrorist.
Agree with this.
I read a book once on how kids need “good enough” mothers. Not a zillion classes, or organic food, or academics starting at age 2, or structured activities. I used to drive myself insane trying to “enrich” my kid’s life but it just made us all miserable. Now we don’t do anything that requires us to be somewhere at a specific time, and we get outside as much as possible (wears them out plus no messes to clean up!) Most days we walk up to the same playground and see the same people, and that’s totally fine with us.