I should start this by emphasizing that the girls are really little sweeties. They are very well behaved. However, they’re toddlers and trying to find out where the boundaries are.
They did some good testing this weekend.
Food-throwing is always a good one. Biting is another. We’ve gotten a couple of bite reports from daycare – that the girls have been bitten, none so far that they’re doing the biting. However, they’ve been testing the biting thing out on us (and the furniture). Jess bit Matt yesterday in the tummy. I didn’t realize he could yell that loud. Neither did she.
Sunday Sam was a little beligerant. She got a timeout. Jessie was quite upset when we carted Sam off to stand in a corner, so after Sam returned, Jessie did the exact same thing and then was rewarded with her own time out. We’ve discovered that a time out tends to disturb the kid who wasn’t involved more than the kid who was. And for some reason after one is punished, the other thinks she needs to do something to get herself punished, too.
They will also apologize for something the other kid did. Jessie hit me with a toy, Sam said she was sorry and then gave Jessie a hug.
You know, it’s really hard to discipline someone when it seems to have no effect on them whatsoever, but their sibling gets deeply disturbed by it.
And it makes no sense to just let them do whatever they were doing.
Separate houses and raising the kids independent of eachother isn’t in the budget, either.
Solutions from anyone out there are very welcome.
