Edward has picked up new habits from his time at nursery and it’s so strange knowing he’s learning things outside the home. He still chatters away as he’s always done but he now has a few funny mannerisms, such as holding his hands behind his back. His nursery encourage them to do things for themselves but I find it funny that at home he’ll sit on the bottom stair and take him shoes off when I ask him to.
He loves his nursery but I’d really like to know what he gets up to. When he’s sitting at the dinner table he claps his closed hands together and on the table and then laughs when I join in. He must have picked this up at nursery.
I feel that his speech is quite slow and I worry that I hold him back as I know what his little grunts mean so he has little incentive to try proper words. He gets really frustrated if I don’t understand what he wants and is prone to the odd tantrum where he lies on the floor and screams! He also reacts really badly if I tell him off for anything and will cry and start chewing his fingers as though he has teething pain. It takes a while for him to calm down from a temper tantrum.
My husband and I are yet to agree on how we should discipline him or deal with these tantrums which probably doesn’t help with consistent parenting! A teacher friend suggested it was probably the right time to introduce the naughty step but at 20 months it feels too young. What do you think?
Bud is just a few weeks younger than your Edward and we are going through the same behavioural things as you. When he throws himself on the floor and has a tantrum we just ignore it and carry on as usual. Distraction – something as simple as ‘shall we play with this cow’ can also defuse it I think. Bud has this little mannerism where he plucks at his mouth when he is distressed or worried, we ignore this too as I don’t want it to become really noticed but it does upset me to see him doing it so it isn’t easy. I personally think that they are too young for the naughty step at the moment. I’m not sure Bud would understand it if we tried this but you may have more success.