Tonight was another lone shopping night as Jason's at a Multicultural Conference.  I'm hoping he comes home with exciting tales though because Steve Krashen is supposed to be there!!!!  WHAT!? You don't know who Krashen is!?? Only one of the biggest second language acquisition theorists of this time! :) hehe...yes, I've typed many of Jason's dictated papers these past few years.....and I will admit, I'm a bit jealous he gets to meet him.

For the past few weeks as Joseph has not been napping more than 30 minutes during the day [although I shouldn't complain because he sleeps all night], Kaylena has been struggling with the "to nap or not to nap" dilema during her daily quiet time.  She also has been responding a lot more aggressively to undesired stimulus or outcomes, ie: throwing a sandwich on the floor if she doesn't want it; throwing herself on the floor if she doesn't want to take a bath.  All of these situations really were concerning me because it seemed like they came out of no where.  This past summer, we already discovered her extreme temper triggers: too much media, too little sleep, too much sugary stuff.  We regained control and recognized that if even one of those three triggers were close to the everchanging maximum capacity, that extra care needed to be taken.  As of late, although her extreme mania tantrums haven't re-emerged, we were concerned about the intensity and purpose behind the just extreme ones.

Then, this past week, as I was interpreting a psychology class, the professor was talking about memory and something to the effect of mental mapping.  He told of a "T-maze" experiment with rats that started rats out at the "base" end of the T-maze, and put food on either the right or left side.  If the experimenter put the food on the right side of the T-maze, the rat would run straight to the end of the T, take a right, and discover the food.  On the second run, the rat would run straight to the end of the T and NOT take a right, but take a left.  Contrary to what we would think, that the rat would go where the food is, psychologists believe that the rats are creating a mental map, need to fill in what the other possible routes are, and discover if there is even greater results elsewhere.

And so, after I thought about that, I decided that I didn't need to get so frustrated with Kaylena.  She was simply turning left.  She already knows what happens when she obeys the rules.  She already knows what happens when she does little things, but she is creating her mental map of our expectations and wants to know what happens when she does something completely random, unexpected, and most of the time loud.  She is experimenting with us, still!

 

In conclusion, as parents we now just take a moment or two to explain again our expectations, and continue with our discipline and rewards.  So when she's screaming, "I WANT MARSHMALLOWS!" at the top of her lungs as we're leaving the store tonight (what her fixation is on marshmallows is, I'm not sure...but it's been that way ever since we had them at a friend's campfire....) I calmly tell her that we don't have any and that we don't need any, followed by, "Why do you want marshmallows?  Are you hungry?"  Which is met with an affirmation, and we are able to distribute a granola bar when we get to the car.  And finally yesterday, after about 3 days straight of her throwing something that she doesn't want and screaming "I NO WANT THIS!!!" and me telling her, "That's fine that you don't want it Kaylena, just say 'Mama, I don't want this.' and I will come take it.  You don't need to scream and yell and throw, you just say, 'I don't want this.' and wait."about 10 times a day......she finally got it!!!   She really is a great kid. :)