More Trian Please

I went to a parenting workshop from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. this morning so Tom and Leah hung out by themselves. For fun, he took Leah to the mall. There's a toy store that has a giant train village with mountains, trees, and a moving train on tracks. Of course, Leah couldn't take her eyes off of it! After some time watching the train, they left and walked back to the car. As Tom was putting Leah in her carseat, Leah signed more train please. Tom then asked, "Do you want to go back to the train?" and Leah signed yes. He finally got to have a conversation with Leah. :)

Leah:
You are walking by yourself now! We've been so busy with Halloween I forgot to mention it. One day, about a week before Halloween, you decided you no longer needed to hold my hand. Watching you walk by yourself is hilarious and so darn cute! You are very proud of yourself! You literally march around the house with a tiny grin on your face. You just keep marching and marching... and will not sit down! One night, you walked back and forth from the den to the kitchen a million times! Another time, you got a can of diet coke out of the recycling box and walked around trying to drink from it (from the wrong end), pretending to be like mommy (gotta quit my diet coke habit). I love you, my newly independent little girl.

These are the words you can say clearly now: Mama, Ah-ma, dada, more, up, apple, duck, door, ball, bird, hi, bye, baby, all done, and oh-oh. Whenever you master a new word, you walk around saying the word for a couple of days. You've been walking around saying oh-oh for a day now.
Not so clearly, you are trying to say: Ostrich, moon, balloon, dog, down, hot, mommy and daddy.
And I can't even keep up with what you know how to sign. There are just too many words. Oh, and your teeth are really coming in. You have 4 teeth on top and 4 on the bottom now.

The parenting workshop this morning was called Tears, Fears, and Tantrums with Aletha Solter. Solter is a respected psychologists who started the idea of Aware Parenting and I'm really lucky I got to take her class. There are 3 basic principles of Aware Parenting:
- Practicing Attachment Parenting
- Practicing non-punitive disciplining
- Recognizing that children have stress and trauma in their lives, and allowing them to cry or rage to release their stress and tension. She believes children are happier and better behaved when they are allowed an emotional outlet (through talking, laughing, playing, and most importantly crying or raging).
She's against using rewards & punishment to dicipline a child. They don't work long-term, and they don't help to produce a child who can make their own choices about their lives. Solter promotes democratic discipline, which involves meeting problem behaviors with a response that honors the needs of all involved. Sure it takes longer, but in the end, you have happy parents and a happy child who feels respected and listened to.