Baby locked in a car alone!

This morning I brought HX for vaccination. After that we went to Tesco to get her some Heinz rice cereal. Its just a quick shopping. As we went back to car park, I started the car engine, throw my bag in, push down the car lock ( as having phobia people may snatch car while I am buckling up HX), after I'd done buckling HX, out of habit I closed the door. At the very second, I realized that HX was left in a locked car alone!, with my handphone, car key all in a locked car! and I forgot to on aircond too!

I was panic and called for help from two old folks having lunch in the next car ( dun know why, but that's not the issue). They were very helpful and the husband went to seek mechanic help from a nearby mechanic shop. We waited and waited. I was really anxious. In the mean time, HX seemed very happy inside, she smiled and smiled. No matter how panic I was, I tried to keep HX entertained by knocking on the door and playing peek-a-boo with her. Then came a few other residents nearby. I managed to borrow a handphone to call hubby to come back quickly to get spare key, although it would take him around minimum 20 mins to arrive! Then a lady was suggesting locksmith, but she said no need since the spare will come in 20mins, must as well save the RM80 service fees. But I couldn't care more about the money, I was very concerned that HX would start crying, and it was stuffy inside without air-cond at all! I hoped to get her out immediately!

Another lady came and suggested why not try the locksmith inside tesco itself. She was very helpful to help me to run up to call for one. The locksmith finally came, he checked and called his boss, also RM80 service fees. Deal! As he went back to get his tools, what I was worried came, HX started crying. I tried Peek-a-boo a few times, it giggle her for first few times and failed later. Then she was distracted by another gentleman who was brought by the old folk earlier, stop crying for a while and started again. Its so scary for me to see her crying but couldn't her at all! 

Finally the locksmith returned, he did something to the lock, and in 2 mins, the car was unlocked and could be opened (without siren at all). I was so thankful, quickly took out RM80 ( I was so glad that I didn't use cash to pay just now as I only got RM90 in my purse). What's more important was HX, I couldn't imagine if she was kept inside any longer. 

I learn the lesson the hard way. I will always keep the car key with me until finishing buckling up my kids and sit in the driver seat. This thing should never happen again. 

Sending HE to preschool

Recently HE seem to be quite attach with her daddy. Everymorning, she would request to hold daddy hand to go out of house and ask me to carry HX instead. She also prefer daddy to bath for her.

One day, she specially request for daddy to send her to school, since we get to go out of house quite early, daddy agreed. Then the next day, she request again, this time I diagree, as last time daddy mention that there is only maid in the school when he arrive there around 740am, I don't feel safe. After much persuason, HE finally give in and willing to say bye bye to Daddy, however...her face is down and teary eye. Her mood in the morning become bad. She refuse to say bye bye to babysitter too when we drop HX there. As the day is still early, I stop over by roadside to talk to her. I remember the lesson I learn during parenting class 2 Sunday ago, reflect her feeling in words, so I go to her and say, " you are sad as you want daddy to send you to school..." right away, she cry out. I hug her, trying to console her. When she is a bit settled, then we head on the school, with her face is still down. As usual, the teacher come out to bring her in when we reach school gate, noticing her moody face. As I mention why to the teacher, HE cry again very sadly. I am feeling bad too.

Hence hubby and I try another strategy, first we decide the day that daddy can send HE, then we inform HE that daddy will send her on Tuesday and Thursday but Monday, Wednesday and Friday mommy send. HE agree. So every morning we tell her what day is today and she understand. I am glad that this way not only teaches her day but also get to keep her cheerful. This I learn from "making children mind without loosing yours" and " how to talk so kids will listen and how to listen so kids will talk". Involving children into decision making even when they are as young as 3 yo like HE, is possible and it gets to reduce unnecessary crying and scolding. still learning to fine tune this skill.

I lost my temper

HE has become a tantrum thrower. She cry frequently and always do the opposite to what we ask her to. She also demands lots of things to be her own way. One the most frequent thing that she ask for is doughnuts. Everyday she ask to buy daughnuts, from morning till night. Then she is showing...I can't say its jeolousy as she is nice to her sister but she seem feeling insecure. She ask me to carry her once we arrive home, if I refuse, which I need to as HX can't walk and need to be carried, she keeps sobbing and even throw herself to the floor once we arrive at the doorstep.
Everyday, everyday she is whining and crying. She is no longer the happy girl that I adore. My angry button seems to be always on the standby mode, with a sensitive touch switch. I really lose my cool with her and even to the point of just want to release my wrath towards HE with some silly action. I can get so angry that I started to pick on her. Like today, after brushing her teeth, I pass her the cup to rinse her mouth and remind her not to drink it. However, she drink it and laugh. I got angry, ok, you like to drink, finish the whole cup! holding the cup to her mouth. She laugh and this bring my angry to higher level and I throw the water to her. She cried. As I see the floor was flooded with her stuffs, colour pensils, puzzles...I threatend to throw into rubbish bin. I did go the bin and throw something ( not her stuff though) but she thought I did and cry till screaming. I don't know what gets into me, I dun attempt to comfort, instead I keep pick her wrongs, just to release my wrath. Of course, what I did only make the situation worse and I ended feeling more guilty and frustrated.
I pray that I can be more calm. A reference say we as parent also is learning and try to manage our own temper tantrum.
'Having children forces adults to take stock of their own emotion maturity', that's right. I begin to understand why some parents are able to torture their own children as seen from the recent sad news in newspaper. Some of them probably had lost the temper too and did something regretful.
I really need to deal with my temper, very hard, very hard. God help me.

Parent lead or Child lead potty train

Eversince HE is borned, grandma always emphasize on potty training even from day 1. Once HE wakes up from sleep or after bath, she will quickly bring over a potty and make the sound as if that's the sound which make her pee. During the first 6 months, I am not quite stressed about it as I think if my MIL able to catch a pee or poo, its by chance. However, once HE started solid, and when the poo gets solid too, I get stress every single day when HE is not passing any motion. My MIL would tell me the horror story of how one of the baby she saw end up having 'intestine'coming out of the anus as the baby overstrain due to constipation... plus what I read online about constipated baby will try not to poo, then the poo get harder and causing pain leading to viscious cycle that worsen the constipation. So I always constantly watching out and try to let HE sit on potty with all the tricks to make her stay sitting on the potty. Before 1 year old, she is quite well 'trained' to poo in the potty and hardly any accident in the pant.

However, I am not managed to 'train' her to pee only in potty. I am also quite relaxed on that matter until she is about 2 years old. The modern cloth diapers don't help to make her in potty trained faster. I have also tried using training pants but that's to my convenience so that it can hold the urine in the pant but HE has no problem running around with a wet pants until hubby or I discover that she has peed! I have read and am told about how leaving toddler bottomless for a few days can speed up the process but I just too tired cleaning up the urine on the floor, sofa or anyway in the house. Therefore, the only strategy that I adopt is, bring to her a potty every 2 hours and keep letting her wear training pants.

The progress has been slow but improving. When she is about 27 months, we manage to keep her pants/pampers dry the whole day but she won't tell us when she wants to pee still. When my second pregnancy come, I start to worry and wonder again when she can be potty trained. All of sudden, when she is about 30 months old, she is able to tell she wants to pee, even when we are out. Now she is 33 months old, its getting better with minimal accidents.

I am glad she is almost completely potty trained. So I would say, HE is parent lead potty train for pooing, but child lead train for peeing. At least throughout the process, we hardly stress her for not able to tell when she wants to pee which could her make her hate toilet. Guess we parents got to stay relax and provide the accessibility, let the child be ready whenever they are ready.

A news that sadden me

Just the afternoon before I headed for the parenting talk. I heard from TV about a real sad news. Its not about someone important died, but 2 boys, at the age as young as 11 and 9 commiting a sadistic abuse on another 11 year old boy. This was real sad and shocking. Young boys like them should be innocent, instead of commiting such a brutal crime, causing the victim till unconscious and covered in blood.

Next thing in my mind, naturally, who were the parents of these boys? what had they thought them? True enough, as I searched for more info online, I read that these boys, among 7 siblings came from a broken family with an abusive father. They were also influenced by pornography and violent movie like 'child play'. From what I read, one of the boy was turning into psychopathic. This reminded me of series of 'Criminal minds' and the movie based on true story 'Changeling' (casted by Angelina Jolie). How we adult changed the world of the children. When those irresponsible adult made the porno, horror and violent movies, all in their mind were money, not realizing that they were making damages. Of course, parents carried the most responsibility. As I search online, it was terrifying to find that this was just one of the many incidences worlwide, involving young kids as crime committer.

It is indeed sad. We as parents got to be extra careful and take extra effort as our children are growing in such world that is getting more wicked. (oops, am I being pessimistic here?). I commit my child(ren) into prayer for protection. I am reminded : Who we are today will determine who our chilren are in the future.

( I couldn't sleep though its already past 12, then decided to spent a bit time blogging. Hopefully get to sleep after this cuz got to work tomo...today!)

Parenting talk part III -after thought

After attending the session, I was inspired and started examining myself as wife and as mother. Had I done anything that cause unhappiness to my husband or my daughter? Had I done good enough to make them happy. Very often I was commented by my hubby whenever he told me a good news or bad news. Last time when he proposed to me, he was hoping that I would be touched to the point of crying, but I didn't lo. :P. I also realized I was someone not easy to be moved emotionally ( but not very hard la, I did have moments of really happy expressions). Probably that was because I was 50% genetically sad and raised like a pseudo-orphan. And I was very reserved in praising too. But I did improve since I was with my boyfriend ( aka my current husband) and had my daughter. This session had given me inspiration and guide that helped me to understand better how to make other happy ( then I will be happy too :))

When we were having tea after the session, someone raised a question : " Normally we often find mothers attending this kind of talk, but not father, why?" That was true, this session was attended by 5 mothers and 1 husband only. Why were husband not interested? They were already good at it or they were just not keen in parenting? Then we were reminded that we could hardly change others, but we could start the change in ourselves then it would eventually change the people around us. Wise words. Hopefully I would always remember this.

Parenting talk- What I learned part II

Happy kids was found in happy family, according to Sulynn. It was important for parents to maintain a good relationship. Very often parents became very busy that their focuses were only on children and not each other anymore. This would lead to problematic relationship later on. Therefore, she advised each parent to make time together, to go for movie or anything, just the two of them, at least once a week or even a month. It was very important. Constant communication was necessary too. If another party appeared to be unhappy, we might ask " you looked unhappy, was it because of me?", as very often it might be due to work or other factors, instead of keep thinking that we were the cause and started to feel stress and ended up spreading the stress to whole household.

Sulynn also introduced a diagram, which I think a description of our way of communication. Based the diagram below, described the spouse response when another party came back with a good news.
A passive response could be 'act like nothing happen and continue with whatever was being done. An active (A) but destructive (D) response could be " Ok, I heard you.what else?", " You got the job to be transfered to China ?! You don't need to care about us? Why China?"... If a communication was kept this way, sooner or later a person would stop telling spouse anything. A good way should Constructive and Active : Acknowledge ( "You got the job!"), Appreciate ("I am so happy for you!) and Amplified (" we should go to celebrate this!") [ those in columns were my recall of the suggested response]. The same applied to how we talk to out kids ( I think to people around us). If a child came back with a work that he did in school, we should praise them, and that in turn would encourage them to improve further or do even better.

At the end of the session, we were asked to examine ourselves by start counting our response to our spouse or children and see where were our response mostly be, P, C, A or D, then improve from there. Sulynn also described happiness was like a bank account, if we made our spouse happy, +1, if unhappy, -5; likewise, if we made our child happy, +1, if unhappy -3. We should try our best to keep the account positive and not negative (bankcrupt) to have a happy family.

Parenting talk-What I learned part I

I managed to attend the talk, although I had to drive alone there. There were total of 6 attendees including myself. The speaker, Sulynn was a fun person and she made the whole session lively and easy to understand. Below was what I understood from the talk

First she started off by explaining certain factors that determine if a child or adult not happy. According to her, 50% of it come from genetic. How about the other 50%? For a child, 15% came from parental influence, another 15% from how parents interacted with each other, another 15% from parent childhood experience. I forgot what the rest of 5% was, but I remembered vividly it was something from the child. Therefore, parents governed about 45% of the factors to make a child a happy kid or sad kid. From as young as 2+ years old, one could remember how once the parents interact ( e.g quarrel), and that could impacted the child for life. ( here I took a deep breath, and thought....ok, must be real careful);

For adult or grownup (inc teenage age, I think) wise, 10% was the environmental factor, then another 40% came from pessimistic/optimistic thinking i.e how we chose to think or what angle we look in a certain cicumstances. The example she used was if there was telephone ringing in the midnight, before you picked up the phone, what came up in your mind, pessimistic person would think of bad news, optimistic person would think of possibly an overseas call... According to Sulynn, this 40% was the area that we could mold. If a child was sad in 'nature', we could help them to think positively to turn the child to be happy one. ( I think the parent must first able to think positively, which I myself was still trying to learn) I think this is not only applicable to parenting but also in any relationship).

Parenting talk

Got an e-newsletter from mumscentre yesterday and informed there would be a parenting talk tomorrow at Lara's place SS2 at 4pm. I am really interested to attend as I like to learn expert opinion in bringing up children. However that's also my daughter napping time and I don't really know how to drive to SS2. If to attend, I wish my husband can drive me there, but then we will need to bring my MIL and daughter along. As my MIL dun really understand english, I can't ask her to attend too, hence they need to be settled somewhere during the one and half hour talk. It is also never a good idea to ask my husband to drive me there and pick me up later, asking him doing that will end up me dropping the idea of attending. hm... need some thinking here.
Anyway, back to the talk. In the past, as long as parents can provide 4 elements to their children, its good enough already. The four elements are : Clothes, Food, Shelter and Travel. However, nowadays parents need to meet children emotional need too.To do that, I think we need to first understand their behavior and how they think. This is the hardest things to learn, compared to the 4 elements mentioned. So, before I got tied down more when the second child come along, I better grab this opportunity to hear what this positive change consultant, the first Asian in the pioneer Master of Applied Positive Psychology has to say about parenting. Hope I get to attend.
For more information on the talk, check out this link