The 'Go Big or Go Home' Method

After some thought of how to shape this blog and some very heartfelt advice from Jack in the words of "you're not going to write a blog every night are you?" I have come to the conclusion that I will post twice weekly. I feel that way I should have enough material to make it interesting enough, but it won't be too much of a drain on my time, 'cause let's face it, I only have space in my life for one drain and his name is Cian. Of course he is as adorable as little drains come!

So as I alluded to in an earlier blog, Cian has hit the 'Terrible Twos'. I used to ask myself, 'how will you know when your child has hit this most talked about period of toddlerhood?' But oh believe me, you know. So Cian has never really enjoyed listening to me, but recently it has become about 10 times worse. He's now so bad at listening that it has genuinely crossed my mind that he might be deaf. I mean not completely deaf, but maybe a little deaf? My mum would always say I was a drama queen and I never really saw what she meant until coming to write this. That's because this isn't the first time that I have jumped to such conclusions. It was only a couple of months ago that I thought Cian might be colour blind because he just couldn't identify colours. I even sought out colour blind male colleagues to understand how and when children are diagnosed. In my defence, Cian's my first child and colour blindness is apparently quite common in men. Plus I didn't have a clue when he should be colour fluent. A few months on, he's starting to grasp the colours so I feel confident my fabulous parenting cured him of his colour blindness.

So as a result of not listening and this choice to disobey us, we have taken to threatening him, or as the child psychologists would call 'setting boundaries' and giving him 'consequences' to his actions. If you're anything like me, following through on a threat can be quite tough. I find myself rationalising all his bad behaviour away with 'oh but he's tired' or 'oh but I think he's teething'. I'm definitely the softer parent. However I think my softer approach has made me more savvy on the consequence front. I am not one of those parents who would say "if you do that once more we are going home" because in reality I am not prepared to go home and ruin my day because of something my mini-me has done. To give you an idea, here's a sample of my threat repertoire:

Repertoire of Threats
If you don't come here right now…	you will be going on the naughty chair
If you do that again...	the iPad will be turned off
If you throw your food...	you won't get any pudding

Cian and the aforementioned pudding

Although relatively small threats, I have learnt you never want to get between a toddler and their pudding. As soon as I became a parent I vowed never to over-commit to a consequence. My husband however has made no such vow. I think he follows some crazy school of thought of 'Go Big or Go Home'. Just the other day the words "if you don't come here right now, we are going to take all your toys away" were shouted. Straight away my head went into my hands. Edinburgh property prices are extortionate, and as such our lovely 2-bed flat is pretty cosy. Where I ask you, does my husband think we are hiding the mass of toys Cian has accumulated over his short lifespan? Does he think we have a secret Narnia wardrobe we've been saving just for an occasion like this? But, that vow that I made meant we needed to follow through in some shape or form. So his new dinosaur toys and all his favourite big trucks were hidden through in our bedroom. After Cian had finished tantruming, he had a little look to evaluate what was missing. After all that, he couldn't have cared any less that his toys were missing!