Adventures in Baby-sitting, Part 2
Saturday
After an AMAZING night's sleep, (for the boys, that is) Nate and Trey woke up full of joy. I honestly thought they would wake up crying or something. They slept from about 9pm until 8am Saturday morning! I was so thankful they had a good night's sleep!
They ate a good breakfast and played for a while and then I measured out the ingredients for making whole wheat sugar cookies. I let them dump the ingredients into the bowl, which was a wonderful treat to them! I also taught them how to use the electric mixer--another delightful experience.
Off to Grandma's House
After a while we took the dough over to my parents' house so we could eventually make and decorate cookies over there, so they could enjoy the boys, too. My mistake was not making them take a nap! When I'm baby-sitting someone else's children I try to choose my battles carefully, though. They take naps at day care during the week but not usually when they're at home.
I did want the boys to at least do something low key for a while, so I put in one of the DVDs they had brought along. Apparently that wasn't enough rest for the poor little guys. Guess I should have done what I would have done with my own kids. Anyway, by the time the dough was ready they were uninterested in making cookies! lol
I jumped in and started messing with the dough, though, and they eventually came around and decorated some. Trey loved pouring the sprinkles on the cookies and stood on the stool for a while, helping. Nate was good at eating the cookies once they were baked. :)
Not used to having two active little boys in my house, I was exhausted! But I knew that it was perfect training for having foster kids.
The boys got a second wind that afternoon and started acting silly and screaming again. They took off their shirts, which I decided not to battle with (after all, they weren't trekking through the snow or anything!), but the screaming I would not tolerate.
SuperNanny to the Rescue!
Up until now, I had been using Positive Discipline techniques (no punishment, just kind and firm teaching) with the boys. However, when they refused to stop screaming I remembered what I had watched on SuperNanny. (the firm, one-warning-and-then-time-out technique) It took a while, as it does with most kids, for them to realize they really had to sit there until it was time to get up. (only one minute per year of age) When they got up before their allotted time, the timer started over.
After a couple of sessions of time-out, the boys started obeying me. They would scream, for instance, and then I would say, "If you scream again, you will sit in time-out." They would say, "Okay".
Stay tuned for part three in this series!
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