Mommy Mishaps: Learning to Parent a Sensitive Toddler

I’ve never claimed to be the perfect parent. I don’t do things consistently from anybody’s “book” and I try to trust my gut for the majority of my parenting decisions. Lately I’ve started to notice how sensitive my toddler is becoming.

For instance, we went on vacation to the Oregon Coast last week. One of the hotels we stayed at had a pool that you could look at from the end of the hallway. After dinner that night, we were coming back to the room and while waiting for the door to be unlocked, Jake strolled to the end of the hall, Natalia right be hind him. The  second she saw the pool, she knew she did not want to go right to bed, even though it was already 9:30 pm. We tried taking her into the room to put on her suit (because if ever there is a time to toss aside bedtime and routine, it’s a vacation) but she wasn’t having it. Jake ended up taking her down to the pool and just sitting on the side while she put her feet in. After 10-15 minutes he explained to her that they needed to go back to the room and either change their clothes or go to bed. She screamed bloody murder the entire way to the room. (Oh, and for a solid 20 minutes after). How we didn’t end up with anyone knocking on our door about the noise, I’ll never know. As I sat there watching it unfold and watching the tiniest things thereafter set her off all over again, I thought about how just waiting to go check out the pool could’ve avoided the entire situation.

She has had other similar situations where the smallest thing (ex: closing the door when we get home  & forgetting to ask her to do it), causes a full blown tantrum, complete with screaming, flailing, and even hurting herself. Sometimes I find myself hurrying to get something or another done and I need to instead take the time to really slow down and do things at a toddler’s speed. I know a big part of it is that she doesn’t communicate verbally well, but we’ve found a few ways to really get her to start talking a little more and she goes to speech therapy 2 times a week. I’m hoping it will be easier to avoid these tantrums and meltdowns once she can find a way to tell us what she needs, feels, or thinks.

Did you have a parenting fail this week? Tell me all about it and you could be featured in next week’s Mommy Mishaps post. =)