Help For My Own Little One

[mamajennleigh]

Hi There! I'm new to the forum, although I've been reading it for days now ! Awesome advice, great tips, and I'm so glad I found this place.

I have a question. I keep 4 littles in addition to my own baby. The others that I keep are all fairly close in age: 11 mos, 13 mos, 14 mos, and 2 yo. They are all wonderful babies for the most part, and I have been blessed in the parent department (although there are a few issues I could use advice with !).

The problem I am having is with my own son! He is 19 mos. old and has become really jealous I believe. He is acting out by crying a lot, pushing and hitting the others, and trying to climb into my lap whenever there is another baby already there. He has done this each time we added a new baby, and since I just added the 11 month old, I expected it. The 11 month old cries a lot for his mom, especially since this is the first time he's been away from her, and although I'm seeing progress with him each day, it seems my own son is getting worse.

SO, here is my actual question: how do you help your own child deal with daycare days? My dcK's are all part-timers and 3 of them have set schedules, but the other one is in and out depending on her mom's retail schedule. We usually have Friday's off so I've been trying to give him extra attention on those days, cuddling up on the couch to watch a video, holding him extra, and bringing out toys that are usually upstairs. Any other ideas?

When he hits or pushes the others, I usually get down eye-to-eye and tell him "NO hitting/pushing/pulling hair! We are nice to others!", and then put him in time out for one minute, after which I reiterate that we are to be nice and I show him "nice" by patting the offended baby's hair and giving him/her a kiss, then repeating it with my son. Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
MamaJennleigh

[My4SunshineGirlsNY]

Your son is at a tough age, I went through a terrible time with my youngest daughter, she was so rough and did the same things...I just did what you did, showed her how to be nice and give her a short time out each and every time, which was quite often.

Unfortunetly, she JUST outgrew it at age 4. Even though the kids are part time and may not all be there at the same time, that is too many little ones in my opinion and still give your son the attention he needs.

When I was doing informal daycare, I had 2 kids at around 1 year old and one 4 month old and my own daughter who was 2 1/2 at the time and very difficult. I HAD to let one go because it was just too much on me to meet their needs and still lead my difficult daughter in the right direction. The more choas, the worse she got.

I would advise in downsizing if you want to work on your sons behavior. Adding to it is only going to make it worse.

[gbcc]

I have to agree as well. There are too many infants to properly provide attention and care. Your son is probably used to being fed on demand and cuddled when needed. Now he needs to wait his turn for everything. Not that thats a bad thing, but with infants it takes so long to care for them from changing them to feeding them.

I also feel this is unsafe for the children. Our state mandates that you may not care for more than 2 children under the age of 2 at one time, including your own. The reason being, God forbid there was a fire or another disaster. How would you choose which one to pick up and carry out and which you would come back for? The older ones may be walking, but not well enough or quick enough to get out during a fire.

It may be legal in your state to have that many infants but I would suggest replacing some of your infants for some older independent children until your son is older.

[laundryduchess@yahoo.com]

I would make sure to give your son plenty of extra time when he is being good, if he hits, no attention. In the afternoons/ evenings after all the kids have left, give him some real good MOMMY time. I know its hard.Because he is your sweetie. But,... he has to know that you are always going to be his Mommy, and he can share you during the day. With my own son I would sing to him when I got him up in the mornings,.. usually at least 20-30 min before the othr kids got there in the morning. I also would tell him,.. Christopher, Mommy has to hold Kevin for a few minutes, can you be a big boy for me and play with your trucks? if I was feeding a baby and he went to act out I would say ,.. Now Bub,... remember that we got time together this morning,.. and you will get special time with Mommy in a bit but I have to get the baby fed right now.

I think you will do great,.. so will he.For the record my son,.. 18,.. is a wonderfully adjusted young man who loves that I was home with him as a baby.

[mamajennleigh]

Let Me Explain

I wasn't very clear in my initial post, so let me word it properly (or at least attempt to ):

I do not have all of these children at the same time on any given day. I typically only have one or two of these children at a time, along with my son. I am sure I could not handle having 5 children 2 and under at the same time without pulling my hair out ! I only have two of the children (My M/Th kids) for the full day. The other two are part time days, for less than 5 hours each.

Also, my son is fed on a schedule, has been since he started solids. He eats his meals at the same time every day with his own set of utensils and his own sippy cup, and snacks are also fed in the same manner. In between meals, he can have a sippy of water if he wants it. He eats all table food, whatever we eat.

Ok, having said that, I agree that he is feeling "left out". Today, even though we don't have any babies at all here, he is really acting out. He laid in the floor and kicked his feet and cried for half and hour. Wouldn't let me hold him or give him a sippy cup or anything else. He has been acting like this for 2 days now. I finally put him to bed where he promptly rolled over and fell asleep.

He just got over a really bad cold where there were no kids here at all for the better part of two weeks (all of them ended up getting it and I didn't want to keep passing it around) so maybe he is just feeling very resentful at having the babies here again?

Thank you all so much for your responses!

[Unregistered]

reply

Hi
I have been doing family home daycare for 6 years. My oldest son was two when I began, he is seven now. He would bang his head as well as act out when I would care for all the children. My doctor said he would grow out of it. Unforturnaltly most of the time it is our own kids that may act out the most. My four year old boy was born into the daycare. He is use to me taking care of other kids. I tell both my boys this is my job and they both seem to do better know they are older.
I am from a state that allows 1 adult to 4 infants, so it can be done. Currently, I serve five two year olds. They are a great group, it depends on the adult and the kids if it is going to work.

Thanks CL

[kitkat]

My DD is 16 months old and is starting that fun stage also. Having the other kids gone for about 2 weeks and now having them back is probably a struggle for him. At 19 months it's hard to understand having to share mommy. I keep reminding myself that it will get better; it's a phase that will pass, at some point Hang in there!

[mamajennleigh]

Thanks again for the replies. He was really acting out yesterday, whining and crying, and nothing seemed to help. I put him down for a nap at 1pm and he slept until just before 5pm. He woke up a new kid. Then, he went to sleep last night early and slept until 9:30 this morning. My hubby said in the beginning that he was probably still tired from being so sick and that he needed extra rest, but of course I thought he was crazy .

He's been the sweet cuddly boy I know him to be all morning. I guess he needed some sleep. None of us got much sleep while he was sick, and I know I'm still recovering, so it makes sense to me.

He had been getting so much better with the daycare babies prior to getting sick that it was almost a non-issue. We had all gotten into a good routine and were getting along, but of course being sick is a always a routine-killer around here.

Thanks again for all the responses to my question. I really love this forum and have already gotten tons of great ideas!

[momofsix]

When I first started daycare almost 20 years ago, my own girls were 6, 2, and1. When my husband would leave for work, all the kids would line up for a goodbye hug, including daycare kids. Then they would all say "Bye daddy!" --you know how some kids call all grown-ups mommy or daddy-- My little girl (the 2 year old) would get SO MAD and yell "He's not your daddy!"
She still remembers that--but my kids have always loved that I do daycare, and even now that they are teenagers they love all my little ones and get very attached to them

[mamajennleigh]

momofsix, that is so funny!

I have the opposite problem. My daycare kids (the ones who can talk that is) call me Ms. Jenn, and my 2 yo daycare girl taught my little man that my name is Ms. Jenn, so by the end of the day, she's calling me "mommy" and he's calling me "Jenn". Now, whenever my hubby points to pictures and says "who's that?" he says, "Jenn!"

[mamajennleigh]

Well, here we go again

Well, I thought we were out of the woods, but apparently not. My little man has had a very rough couple of days. He refuses to sleep in his crib for naps or at night. He just screams and screams and screams (like he's frightened or something). My hubby and I are not afraid of letting him CIO, when it is a reasonable amount of time, but this is crazy. He ended up sleeping in my bed last night and every few minutes, he would reach over and frantically search for my face before settling down again. He even tried sleeping on top of my face .

Any ideas? I mean, I'm beginning to worry that I'm doing the wrong thing by keeping other kids here. My gut says he's having some kind of separation anxiety or something similar. I only have two other babies here at any given time, and everyone is gone by 3-5pm every day. I don't even keep anyone on Fridays, so as far as schedules go, I've got it verrrrry easy.

I thought he just needed rest after his awful cold was gone, but he started right back up a few hours after I wrote my last post here.

[My4SunshineGirlsNY]

It's hard to say if it's the other kids effecting him or not. Does he seem to act the same or better on the Fridays when you have no children?

He might just be your diffucult child...some children just don't give up and are highly stubborn. I have 2 kids out of my 4 that were very head strong. The key to these children are consistancy and persistance. Don't give in one time and not the next. It makes it twice as worse....although I know that is much easier said than done.

[mamajennleigh]

It's hard to say if it's the other kids effecting him or not. Does he seem to act the same or better on the Fridays when you have no children?

He might just be your diffucult child...some children just don't give up and are highly stubborn. I have 2 kids out of my 4 that were very head strong. The key to these children are consistancy and persistance. Don't give in one time and not the next. It makes it twice as worse....although I know that is much easier said than done.

This is relatively new, so it's hard to say if he's better on Fridays or not. He wasn't last Friday, in fact, he was plain awful all day.

Here's a typical scenario: he wakes up happy, eats his breakfast fine, and then around 10am it starts. He becomes whiny and then begins to scream over some small usually insignificant thing, and then just keeps on screaming unless I pick him up and hold him. This goes on until I lay him in his bed at 1pm. Then he screams and screams until I can't take any more and go and retrieve him from his crib. He continues to cry and scream until I pick him up and rock him to sleep. Then he sleeps for about an hour on the couch and wakes up fine, like nothing ever happened. Does it make sense when I say that his cry is "pitiful" sounding, the sort usually reserved for when he has really gotten his feeling hurt, or has been physically hurt in some way?

It's so weird because prior to the past two weeks or so he was a very happy baby with no sleep or food issues. Now he has both.

I know what you're saying about difficult children - my 17 year old was a very difficult baby, and well, nothing has really changed as he's gotten older LOL!

[Crystal]

ear infection? I'd almost bet on it!

[mamajennleigh]

Do you think so?

Wouldn't it hurt other times before naptime? Forgive my ignorance, but since my next oldest is 12, it's been a loooooong time since we've had ear infections around here . He hasn't been running a fever, although he felt warm several different times yesterday, I never took his temp.

He did have a very hard time falling asleep last night, even after I put him in our bed, he tossed and turned and kept moving his head around.

I also wanted to mention that after his screaming fit yesterday and last night, he felt clammy and cold even though he was sweating, instead of warm and sweaty like he usually does. I don't know if that means anything at all.

I guess he could have an ear infection, and I'm going to go ahead and call the doc to see if I can get him in.

Thanks!