The Listening Jar

Megan is about to turn 3. You know how everyone claims it’s the “terrible two’s,” thus giving us first-time moms hope that when a child turns three, everything miraculously gets better? It’s a lie. A bold-faced lie. All of the moms of 3 year-olds I know say the three’s are even worse than the two’s. Right about now, I’m really not appreciating the way they gave me that false hope. Megan is as stubborn as ever, and discipline is a bit of a challenge.

One of my friends gave me an idea – a listening jar. We’re fresh out of jars in this house, so I’m using a little glass, but I’ve put 10 fuzzy balls in it, and if Megan stops listening, she loses a ball. If her listening is good, she gets a ball back. I started this on Saturday, when we had a particularly bad day. I was exhausted and needed a nap, and my child was clearly in the same boat, given her mood. But her nap lasted 10 minutes. 10 minutes, I tell you! Not nearly enough for either of us to calm down and get refreshed. The rest of the day went terribly, terribly downhill from there. So, I started the listening jar. We went out to dinner that night, and she listened very well so that she could earn some of her balls back. But of course, bedtime was a struggle, and she did her best to stall as long as possible to put bedtime off. The stalling resulted in her losing a listening ball. That seemed to really resonate with her, but perhaps it resonated a bit too much. At 3:30am, we heard her crying, saying, “I want my ball back! I want my ball back!” That’s right. She wanted to earn her ball back. At 3:30am. At 4:30am, I gave up, and she finally went back to sleep. Last night went markedly better, and she stayed in bed without a peep until it was light in the morning (which was what we told her she needed to do to earn another ball back). This morning, she was only too happy to drop the new ball into the listening jar.

So, we’ll see how this progresses. She certainly seems to be responding well, and she definitely doesn’t want to lose any of her listening balls, but something tells me this won’t be a cure-all. She hasn’t even turned three yet. It’s going to be a long year!