Taye

Luis and I have been talking a lot lately about how Taye amazes us. He does in many ways, but specifically we have been talking about his ability to handle his emotions.

A couple of months ago he went through a period of time where he did not want anyone to come over our house. Half the time he would even try to get rid of Mom when she came home or came down from her room. Unfortunately for him, I watch my 2 neighbor kids every morning before school, so they had to be here. Every day for almost two weeks, he would try to shut the door on them and say, 'bye!' when they came over. When he saw that they weren't leaving, he would get upset and shut himself in the bathroom or the bedroom. I learned early on to leave him alone, he didn't even want me in there. He would stay in there for a few minutes and then come out and say 'hi', completely happy and fine. I had never seen anything like it, such a young child being able to handle obviously strong emotions in such a calm way. He knew what he needed to do to make himself feel better and he just did it, that amazed me. Luis says its normal, thats how it is supposed to be, and somehow it just gets lost along the way. To be honest, I don't have that kind of self-awareness/self control half the time, I wish I did. I just hope that we don't mess it up for him somehow, that we are able to protect that in him.

Lately he is doing it in other ways. I notice that when he gets frustrated/upset, he'll say "I wanna throw ___ " or "I wanna break ____." He rarely actually does those things without saying that he wants to first. And even then, he won't do it unless we say its ok. We try to find good ways for him to get the emotions out. The other day he was holding coloring book pages, and told Luis he wanted to break them. No harm there, Luis told him he could if he wanted, and he did. He seemed to feel better after. Another time he told me he wanted to throw something, and I told him he could throw it at the couch, just not at people, which he did. If its something he really can't/shouldn't do, we suggest something different. Earlier today he wanted to break something, I can't remember what, but it was something I didn't want broken, so I asked if he wanted to rip some paper instead. He did. He seems to just need something to get the anger out.

A couple of nights ago, I waited too long to put the boys to bed, and Taye was overtired. He did not want to go to bed, and it was a tearful bedtime for the first ten minutes or so. At one point he was sitting on my lap, and said "I wanna break it!" I asked what he wanted to break, and he said, "I wanna break Mama!" I didn't really know what to say to that, so I just hugged him and we snuggled and he fell asleep. I really like him. :o)