Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Taming the Trouble Monkey



I initially wrote this post yesterday but the internet crashed – grrr.  Ho hum, I guess my computer was testing boundaries in a similar way to how Alby had done earlier that day over breakfast.

With greater understanding of the world comes appreciation for wrong and right.  Or at least that’s what I’m aiming for.  There are a huge number of things I turn a blind eye to everyday.  One of the key messages coming from any toddler-related book or article is “choose your battles carefully”.  With that in mind Alby is free to pull toys and books off shelves with reckless abandon.  Toilet paper can be unrolled and pulled around the house. Furniture and climbing frames are interchangeable words and water can be splashed, everywhere and anywhere.

However, there are a few rules boring Mama Beebe likes to impose in her house.  Firstly, we don’t pull hair and we don’t scratch faces.  Alby has learnt on the hair pulling, but my face still holds a few war wounds from over excited baby nails.  We don’t hit the television (crickey have I heard some serious horror stories of children who have pulled televisions onto themselves).  And we don’t drop food on the floor.

From day one Alby has marked the end of mealtime by dropping food on the floor.  Sometimes this is a delicate process, pea by pea, other times it’s a whole arm swipe of the tray causing food to fly across the room, stopped only by crashing into wall / radiator / Percy’s face. 
When Alby was younger I tolerated this manoeuvre; the first item dropped would be my signal to act fast.  Nowadays though, mealtimes are just one more opportunity for a bit of Ably education.  We’ve got bit of a way to go but I like to think some progress is being made…


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