Oh, the irony...

I'm becoming one of those parents. You know the ones, the ones who are obsessed with books on parenting and trying to work out just how badly they are screwing up their kids.

So far I've only read the one book, but suddenly I find myself with a "to-read" list as long as my arm. Whoops. On the plus side, my newest obsession is unlikely to affect anyone but myself, as my input on parenting strategies is still, as far as I can tell, unwelcome. I can't imagine my girlfriend will be any more receptive to "I read this in a book," than she has been to anything else I've said.

I've been back at home since yesterday evening, and we've had a pretty good time with Bean overall since I came in. We were fine right up until just before bedtime, at which point the very notion of being asked to go pee was treated as ANATHEMA. So I held him by one hand in the bathroom as he jumped and thrashed and flailed and flopped—right up until he accidentally knocked his leg against the bathroom counter and promptly wailed in anguish. So I sat him on the toilet, gave him a kiss (to make it better, you understand), and we had the following exchange:

Me: "Was that a good idea or a bad idea?"

Bean: *hiccupping* "A b-bad idea!"

Me: "Mm-hmm. And do you think you would have hit your leg if you'd listened and gone pee like we told you instead of flailing around?"

Bean: "Da!"

(As an amusing side note, Bean has not said "yes" or "yeah" or "yup" in about two years. For reasons unknown to anyone, he started saying "Da!" like a little Russian boy, and nothing we do or say has made him change his mind)

After that there were hysterics at bedtime because he remembered a half-eaten apple that he decided he had to have right now instead of going to sleep. He ended up not falling asleep until about ten to nine... an hour and twenty minutes after bedtime.

This morning went much better. My girlfriend was going on a field trip with her class (she's taking conversational French in order to hone her skills for the job market here in Quebec), so she told me last night she and Bean needed to be out the door by 8:00 at the very latest.

Morning and evening routines are what Bean finds the hardest to adhere to. Inevitably there seems to be screaming and tantrums and tears, or else he simply ignores all requests to go to the bathroom/eat his cereal/put on the clothes he's picked for the day. In the past 2-4 weeks this has gotten so bad that he and my girlfriend have not made it out of the house before 8:15 at the earliest, and sometimes as late as 8:45. My girlfriend's class starts at 9:00, which gives her not enough time to drop Bean at daycare and get to class on time.

Generally in the mornings I try to stay out of the way as much as possible. It's been made clear to me that I don't know what I'm doing and that my interference is unwelcome. This morning, though, I offered to help out, and much to my surprise she accepted. So while she was sorting out her lunch I got Bean going for the day.

Perhaps it was the novelty of my going through the morning routine with him, but he did really well right up until the last minute. He went to the bathroom and took off his nighttime diaper with very little prompting. He picked out clothes for the day (a button-down shirt and his "cosy" pants, since all his skirts are in the wash) and got dressed all by himself—I helped with exactly one button. While he ate his cereal I pulled out my phone to show him the new foal in my "pony game" (an iPhone game called Derby Days with which he's developed a slight fascination). By then it was five minutes to 8:00 and the car was packed and it was looking really good for getting out the door on time. Alas, at the last minute he decided he wanted to play in his room rather than go pee and put on his shoes, and so there was more flailing and whining and it took both of us to get his shoes on him. In the end, they made it out the door at 8:05, which is still the earliest they've been in at least a month.

In short, I'm counting today a win so far. If we can carry this momentum through to the evening right through bedtime, that would be awesome.

In the meantime, I have a stack of reading to do...