Matthew is back in the hospital, and with his blood counts being low, they're in a tough spot.

Please, keep him and the family in your thoughts.

Piper, the middle child, the child in the terrible threes, and our most volatile child (thusfar, Lord help us if Chloe is more so), is in the process of being heavily disciplined. One thing I have to say is that my children definitely keep me on my toes. Piper, moreso than the others, keeps me revisiting my parenting paradigms, rechecking what works and what doesn't, and remembering that more important than sticking to some preconceived ideals I held pre-children (or pre-spirited child) is meeting the needs of each individual child.

As mentioned before, ideally, I'm opposed to spanking. I've worked on toning down Piper's tantrums with Hug Therapy. It's worked very well, for both kids. However, Piper was still screaming, and wasn't following directions well, and was resisting all forms of discipline. I reached the point where I've spanked her now, twice. Some of my basic rules to spanking:

1. Try to head the negative behaviour off with hugs and positive reinforcement to get the behaviour that is wanted.

2. Explain, and reexplain the consequences of the negative behaviour if it appears that she is starting to resist, including that it could end in a spanking.

3. Be quick and consistant when she is misbehaving. At home, that's a QUICK time out for not following directions, no more warnings for the initial offense. Remind her that if she doesn't turn the behaviour around, what the next consequence will be, but hug her when she DOES turn around quickly.

4. Spanking is a LAST resort, and is never done out of frustration or anger. If necessary to meet this rule, I may have to remove myself from the situation and then come back calmly.

5. And of course, as always, be consistant.

Like I said, I've had to do it twice, and the improvements in her behaviour are staggering.

One more tool up my sleeve? Having her help teach Chloe good big girl behaviours. That way, I KNOW she's internalizing what I'm saying. For example, Chloe has learned from Piper to scream. We're teaching Chloe to sing "lalala" instead of screaming. We've started having Piper help teach her this lesson. So far so good, I may have to use this tool MORE often for MORE behaviours.

Here's hoping we don't have to spank anymore.

And of course, Chloe's playing "Peek-a-boo", so now that I'm a YouTube user, I've got to add her in here:

After seeing this show with our friends, the Ryan's, (their son's girlfriend was in it), my girls loved it so much that we had to run home and buy the soundtrack via iTunes. They've now enjoyed the music for over six months. They STILL crack up over the Snail who took the entire year to deliver a letter from Frog to Toad (who, of course, lived just across the way). So this morning they gave me a show.