Welcome to Napless Valley

So I think I mentioned before how we got these 3 new kids in our home..a 2,3, and 4 year old. They are basically good kids, except that they are 2, 3, and 4. That many of them in one house makes for some real vintage whine.

In addition, someone trained them that the way you tell someone you need or want something is you stand in the middle of any group of adults and cry loudly and unreasonably. I knew some guys in boot camp that tried something like that.

Once.

These kids know you don't need tears, you just need the sound. As all of us know, any adult with more than 15% hearing will respond by offering everything possible until the right thing hits.

Not good.

The 2 year old and I have a routine now where I stand there and mock him in response to his crying. It annoys even me, but he seems to understand how stupid it is....he sometimes just stops and stares at me. Of course, nobody offers me anything to make me stop, they just hope it'll work so I'll stop. Being annoying to get what you want isn't restricted to kids.

We are getting some progress, as the 4 year old almost never cries, and the 2 year old can turn it off with the right prompting.

The 3 year old, however, hasn't moved very far from her first day. She cries for no apparent reason sometimes. Often, the only option is isolation until there is quiet...a technique that often makes things worse (decibally speaking) before they get better. She doesn't buy the "Poppa's crying too" routine...I think she sees it as validation rather than redirection. Sometimes the "cry accelerator" gets stuck, and she just wails and pants and screams. She'll get it sooner or later, we're hoping sooner.

Our institutional system for providing parents for children who need new ones them has a fatal flaw. It assumes that children can be moved until there is a good fit. These newest little guys we have point to the fact that a child, especially a very young child, is a different person almost week by week as their brains wire to fit the environment they are in. They sometimes lose opportunities to learn when that enviroment is jerked away or undergoes a radical change without warning. They leave with neurons left hanging. Like my new 3 year old demonstrates, they are stuck in a rut of an age-inappropriate behavior set that requires remedial teaching to overcome. The problem is - then they lose out on what is appropriate, what might have happened if they weren't occupied with recovering. The more times this happens the more the deficits build on each other.

I suppose there is an economy stimulation effect though. It does create employment for counselors and analysts as these people reach their early 30's...

I hope my new little girl has the crying worked out before then.