Big boy jar

I have been having the hardest time with Liam lately. I guess I'm finally getting to that stage with him where mothering starts to mean more than "make sure he is fed, happy and doesn't harm anybody." Now I have to really shape his behavior. He's his own little man with lots of powerful emotions and lots of opinions, questions and attitudes. I must admit that it got the best of me at first. I was completely caught off guard by some of the things he has been doing. I immediately took on the mindset of, "He must be tired and hungry. He will feel better later," only to realize that his behavior and my tolerance for it got worse every single day until I felt like throwing in the towel. I wondered where the heck I went wrong with him. Then I got some sleep and did a little research and realized that this is actually coming at just about the right time. He's going to be 3 in a few days and he's going to start acting like it. Awesome. So... what do I do? There are a few things I have learned already.

1. Build him up. Compliment and encourage him. For starters, this helps him feel good. It also makes me responsible for finding good qualities in him when it starts to feel like there aren't any. This helps ME immensely.

2. Encourage and reward good behavior. Increasing good behavior is way easier and more effective than attempting to lessen undesirable behavior.

3. Ignore the less pleasant behaviors so as not to reward it with a reaction. (Way easier said than done). Or time out the bad behavior if it's that important. The reason I say "if it's important" is because I've read that you should only time out really bad behavior like hitting but not behaviors such as defiance or whining. Liam's main problem is tantrums that are so loud and intense that it disturbs everyone in the house. If Liam isn't happy, nobody is. I try to ignore this for as long as possible then I give him a time out so he can cool off and so that the rest of the family can continue their peaceful day. It's just that important to me.

The main system we have been using is this little guy.

Meet Liam's big boy jar. He decorated it himself and he fills it with "jumping beans." He's obviously a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse fan so we just went with it.

He earns beans with good behavior like performing a task without crying or whining or just being helpful or kind. When the beans fill up to a certain point he gets something special. Material objects don't really motivate him but an ice cream shop date alone with mommy or a family trip to Disneyland are worth working towards for him. We have only been doing this for a couple of days but it seems to be helping. It isn't flawless, of course. We have had a couple of meltdowns about the beans not filling up fast enough but we still feel like a weekly reward is about as frequent as we can manage. Except for the occasional squinkie for really good days.

Fingers crossed that we can pass through this phase quickly with our sanity in tact.