Its amazing how quickly time goes by. Simone will be three years old in four months. The picture on the left is of Simmi and Poppie walking down a the road on a piece of property we went to see this past Saturday. We were walking around on that land for almost two hours, and it was great to see her be so excited and also handle the bright sun so well. I was concerned that the bright sun would start to make her scream, but she handled it beautifully. She has been learning to adjust to bright lights and full sun, and when she is overwhelmed by the light or by noise she will go find a dark quiet place to settle herself down. She has been putting into practice her own coping skills which has been her biggest breakthrough so far.
Simmi is an absolute delight. She’s is exceptionally intelligent as well. As she learns to maneuver around her own speech problems, she is finding other ways to communicate. Not through sign language, but through “showing” us what she wants. She can ramble on and on about something, but when we say “show me” she will show us what she wants or even how she is feeling. Just like any other toddler on the planet, she has learned the art of emotional manipulation. Almost all toddlers do it, but how you handle emotional manipulation will surely make your life a living hell if you don’t maintain control during those times. So what does emotional manipulation mean to me? There are several examples I can give but depending on the child’s understanding, sometimes they can be more complex situations. For now I’ll give a few basic scenarios:
I am the one that is with Simmi throughout the day. Everyone else in the family is either working or at school. When the emotional manipulation started, it was simply screaming at the top of her lungs (not all the time) when I said she couldn’t have something. After a few times of that happening, she employed another tactic…”pouting.” Oh the pouty lip! How I love it. If I say “no you can’t have that” or “not right now” or “no you can’t take the bubbles into your crib,” she’ll collapse on the floor, put her hands together, playing with her fingers, stick out that pouty lip and these big tears come rolling down her face. It is quite the site. She will sit very sorrowful for a few minutes, and when she realizes that the pouty thing isn’t going to work, she gets up like it never happened and accepts that she will not get what she wants. You may be thinking to yourself, “yeah, so what, all toddlers do that!” I’d say very true since my children all did that as well, but as for me it allows me to see how her mind works. It allows me to see that she can reason to a certain extent and also understand that “no means no.” Which leads me to example number two…
The end of the workday draws near and Poppie comes home. She is so happy to see Poppie that she runs into his arms. He is such a softy with her and he can’t resist her charms. He has gotten into the habit of always picking her up and carrying her around in the house. Is this bad news in the making? Well it is for him and for her. I don’t pick her up and carry her around the house all day. We do activities, play and things like that. When Poppie is home, she is like this very powerful little being controlling the largest person in the house. He picks her up and she’ll point to a direction…he takes her there. She points to another direction, he takes her there. If he tries to put her down, the extreme screaming starts, so he quickly picks her up again. This is emotional manipulation to an extreme. The screaming doesn’t stop unless she gets what she wants from him. If I step in and whisper to him not to pick her up, she will scream and scream, and if I try to correct it, she goes into the pouty mode. She will not look at me, smile, and no one can talk to her in those moments. By “moments” that could be a half hour or more. Then without a second thought, he’ll pick her up again. Its like second nature to him. When these types of things occur it just teaches her that if she holds out a little longer, she’ll get what she wants anyway. This can hinder any pleasurable experience he might have with her in a major way. She is in complete control of him, so if he wants to do an activity with her, or employ some therapy techniques, she stops that dead in its tracks. We have therapists here throughout the week, but it is up to us to take the lead with her therapy. A therapist is only here for a short time showing things we can do for her to help her, but if he can’t be proactive in her therapy because she is controlling the situation, he loses out on a beautiful experience. Often he feels trapped in the situation, so we are working on ways for him to be a little more firm with her. Its almost painful for him, because he looks at those gorgeous green eyes of hers and he melts. To make matters worse, she just started to say “Poppie” this past week. Its awesome that she can say his name but for him it is torture! LOL He will hear “Poppie? Poppie come, Poppie come, Poppie come!” and he will want to go in there and just sweep her out of her crib into his arms. It is the sweetest thing to hear her call his name. But we have a schedule we keep with her…especially in the morning, and if he breaks the protocol, the day goes sour very quickly. This past Saturday was a good example of that. He and I were having coffee, and she knew he was home. She knows each of our footsteps. We always go into her room and get her bottle ready, change her diaper, and she drinks in the crib and lets it digest for a while. After about an hour and a half we take her out of the crib and she can have breakfast…this is the start of each day. Including the weekends. Consistency is very important. It was hard for him to just sit and listen to her say “Poppie come, Poppie? Poppie, POPPPPPPPPIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” But it was good for him to see that it would stop. He and I sat there giggling with delight as we listened to her call his name. When that didn’t work she said something she’s never said before…”MOMMY”. Now, I’m grandma, I have never been mommy. We never taught her to say mommy or to have her call mommy, but she was saying it very clearly. By this point it was time to take her out of the crib, and when Dom went in to get her, she looked at him and said “Oh Poppie” and put her head on his shoulder, and when I came into the room she pointed at me and said “Mommie” then pointed at Dom and said “Poppie.” She made the connections and said things purposefully. She’s been saying his name ever since.
Another more scary thing that has been happening is that she is having reactions to food that she has never been allergic to before. On Monday, we gave her tilapia with a sauce that Dom had made. Within a minute, her lips swelled, her face puffed out and started turning red. Then she wouldn’t close her mouth. I rushed and got some benadryl into her and she was ok after that. We don’t know if she is developing an allergy to fish now, or if it was one of the two spices in the sauce. Two of the ingredients were mustard and cummin. Then she had a bad reaction to some homemade potato chips we made. She loves potato chips, so we made some using corn oil. We are unsure whether she is developing an allergy to potato or corn or both. We gave her some regular potato chips and she had an even worse reaction than to the ones we made. The potato chips we bought were made with corn oil. Until we take her for more testing it is hard to know what she is allergic to. Her reaction to the potato chips yesterday was really bad also, resulting her in lips blowing up, and not being able to close her mouth. The rash on her face was bright red as well. Simmi can’t seem to catch a break with all this food allergy stuff. It usually takes a few days for whatever is in her body to finally reach “the other end” and then she ends up with a really bad diaper rash. She has had a total of three severe reactions since December, and when that happens she also gets purple spots. Right now her chest is covered in purple spots. They can take anywhere from a month to three months for them to clear up.
Sorry this entry was so long…its been a while since I’ve updated her blog.
Thanks for reading!
Tags: emotional manipulation, photophobia, severe food allergy, speech disorder, three year old toddler
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