Too Early to Expect (Some) Self-Control?

Permission to dislike me for what I’m about to write. I have produced two kids who like to sleep. Nighttime, naptime. No sweat. They even are so obliging as to take simultaneous afternoon naps everyday. Hence, afternoon blog posting.

But today, instead of drifting merrily off to sleep, my two year old daughter decided instead to galavant around upstairs after I repeatedly tucked her into her bed. Ha! So much fun! Plus it makes Mom come back upstairs to see me! She sleeps most often in a twin bed these days so that the crib will be vacant when it is needed for her younger sister. So I put her back into her big bed 2 or 3 times before saying that if she kept getting up, I’d have to put her back into her crib…which is where she is now.

Now I have funny ideas about limiting my kids’ access to naughtiness. What the heck does that mean? Basically it means that I’m not super happy about putting her back into her crib to sleep. I don’t like putting all of my “breakables” away since I now have a kid who can reach them. I don’t want my house to be child-proofed in the way of fencing my kids in to a designated “safe” play area. I want my house to look like I live here too! I want to have access to things that I want throughout the day. Even though I sometimes find my chapsticks (strategically placed throughout the house) with fingernail gouges in them (which I find so damn irritating!), I don’t move them away. I WANT MY CHAPSTICKS WHERE I PUT THEM! I dislike chapped lips, but I dislike moving from the comfy couch even more!

So the question is, is it foolish of me to expend energy working to place imaginary boundaries around the house when I could simply construct real ones? Is it too much to expect my kiddo to show some self-control?

I think the answer for me is that when I had only one child, the invisible boundaries were put in place partly to start teaching her things and partly out of vanity. I wanted to show others and myself that even though my life had totally changed since having a kid, I didn’t have to totally change my life once she was here. Does that make sense? But now that there are two of them, it’s actually pretty important that my bigger kid have some self-control, otherwise she would never be able to interact with her little sister. Right now she has the ability to squish, hurt, maim my three month old. If she couldn’t control those “powers,” then I could never step out of the room while the two of them were in it. I’d never be able to take a shower when I’m the only one home with two awake kids. But she would also never be able to show her little sister how much she loves her. If she didn’t know how to control her body a little bit or what’s ok to touch and what’s not (eyes are off limits! as is the china cabinet!), she could never give her sister a hug goodnight.

I still wrestle with how much self-control I should expect from my older daughter, but I think that I’m right in expecting some, yes? At any rate, she’s definitely sleeping in her “big” bed tonight!