My 30th-Month-Old : Everyone's Best Friend

Oh yes! This month is extra special for us because we met equally awesome girlfriends at the church. Since we don’t attend daycare yet and mostly at home all day, we need and love this great opportunity of interacting with other kids. Despite the fact that we’re shy and typically ignoring each other at first, my mom said: “first friendship is the real thing”.

Okay, so I’m trying to sound like Chloe there.

But I hope you did get the message across. I’m trying to expose Chloe to kids at her age to see if she’s good at socializing and if she's better than mine. Well, it can be overwhelming sometimes with kids running and yelling all around but it can be peaceful too when kept at a small number. A group of 2-3 kids is ideal when mixed with older ones. Good thing, Chloe is not possessive with her toys except to her favorite shows on youtube and that she’s a social butterfly after all.

We just have to put extra effort on her progressing language skills to chat and express herself clearly with her playmates. Though she chatters away at home every now and then, but with a British accent, only Mom can decipher. Lol! And I’m taking this little improvement in languages to work for me. Oh yes, I keep asking her questions and longer commands even if she’s not following but only imitating my speech. I have a lot of videos to prove you that. Ha! She often copies exactly the way I utter it and how I shrug my shoulders with similar hand gestures like, “I don’t know”. For some strange reason, I love how she stutter and jumble other words, “outside” for “outshyn”, open for “Ahpen”, toys for “totoys” and Mommy I want to take a shower with “Mommy, Chowe (her name Chloe ) shower!” I know it’s not much but I can’t wait for her to master speech and begin conversing in clear, complete sentences - in English. :-)

Another thing, I don’t know how this happened but I hope it's just a part of parenting at its finest. Ha! While I’m trying to be consistent in instilling principles and standard of behaviors like a Please and Thank You, I felt like some were being used against me and I’m sure I'm missing crucial points somewhere. I might be succeeded at imparting polite “please(s)” at her every single request but I forgot to clearly define what she’s getting; and that it is not always a “yes”. Now it’s hard to say no to almost anything even to your strict house rules of enforcing TV or phone time-out. I can’t deny those sweet gestures of “please” with matching praying hands folded often make things better and I just let those circumstances slide every now and then. I just have to be extra careful if I don’t want to be locked in a future conflict with a 30-month-old mini-me, right? I mean consistency is the key.

So mommies, how do you handle requests with-a-please-but-still-a-no situations with your kids?