Our Josiah Boy

Here is another lovely picture of Josiah playing in the leaves. We have this huge tree in the backyard that deposits many a leaf this time of year all over the grass.

A short post about this sweet boy in that we are still working with him on various things, one of which is to learn how to interact with other kiddos a little better. What I see at Awana is that he gets so obsessed about some toy or whatever and then has a complete meltdown when another kid wants to play with the toys he has chosen or has "claimed" as his. I am trying to recreate situations like this at home, so that he can understand that he doesn't always get everything he wants. For instance, today he wanted me to play with the cars with him and said, "You pick a car Momma." So I picked Ferrari from the "Cars" movie (as this seems to be the car I am usually given when we play). Right as I chose Ferrari, he said, "That is the car that I picked," and tried to take it away from me. I told him that I had chosen that one and if he wanted me to play with him then he needed to let me choose the car I wanted. He had a bit of a meltdown and then decided he didn't want to play cars afterall and started kicking me while he was laying on the floor. I told him them to go back to his room and sit in his rocking chair. He was then crying out for me over and over and I went back and we had a heart to heart about why sharing was important and how we need to treat other people. He can verbalize to me that he has options as to what to do instead of hit, kick, or push, but many times he still does these things when he gets mad anyway. It is a challenging thing we are dealing with and it takes much patience as he doesn't seem to grasp this concept very well yet. I know he is just 3 1/2, but it is still important to work with him anyway on this.

As I type this, for now the 3rd time today he has had another "accident" with peeing his pants again. I am convinced this has more to do with getting my attention then him actually not being able to control himself because whenever we are out in public he has always been able to "hold it" and has never had an accident away from home. It always seems to occur when he is rebelling against something I have told him to do such as: stay in his room until it is time to wake up, go to his room when it is nap/quiet play time, or something similar to these situations. I am getting rather tired of dealing with this behavior and my solution for now has been to make him take his wet clothes off and deal with the mess himself and I hope that this will be uncomfortable enough for him to actually stop doing this. If anyone has any suggestions, I would welcome them.