I Do! I Do!

LITTLE MISS INDEPENDENT

No, its not a bride or groom on their wedding day. Its the most common sound of my day living with my 2.8 yr old daughter, Sophie. My daughter has taken this I DO to the next level...she has become obsessed with a particular episode of Cailou where little sister Rosie wants to put her own shoes on and in her sweet voice says "I Do Cailou I Do". Well Sophie's response to this episode is "thats so funny!". For weeks now I hear every day..."Momma, Cailous...I do I do". Thank you speech therapist for helping my daughter learn to speak more...now I know what she wants!

Do you remember Erik Erikson from child psychology classes (shout out to psych majors). Mr. Erikson explained it best. My 2 year old is going through Autonomy versus Shame (Will) in which its very normal for my child to say I DO or NO or pull away as we try to assist them with their daily activities. My litle Sophie is learning to have self-control, courage and will. Erikson goes onto say that this is the time in which we have the opportunity to build our child's self-esteem. Makes sense but enough text book...in practical terms....this is a stage we can totally screw up our child. React the wrong way too many times and we will have a child with poor self-esteem. How is that for pressure? OMG!? How can I avoid whatever pitfalls my mom fell into...as I did not have the best self esteem growing up (not to mention being overweight and many issues that came with that?!).

The power of being a mommy is pretty darn scary. Is it ok to fall back on the standard "do the best you can..its all you can do"? I think not. I think our generation can be a little more informed (but not too informed...lets not get OCD here). Its easier to be informed than our parents. They didn't talk. They literally had no outlet to share. No internet...no Mommy and Me. They had their neighborhood coffee klutches filled with others who were clueless. At best they had Phil Donohue..who I am not certain covered a lot of topics on children or not but it was clearly not enough. We have the internet, classes, message boards, facebook, twitter and my new find...BLOGS!!!!

So join me in taking a collective deep breath and next time as my daughter slows me up to put on her shoes (even if on the wrong foot like Rosie), I will simply take a deep breath. I can be a few minutes late for that appointment?! Let her learn to put her shoes on...encourage her..embrace her independence and always let her know her momma is here to guide her and yet give her that chance to suceed or fail even if it takes forever to get the darn shoes on!Oh and by the way....That Cailou episode we talked about earlier has been replaced with the one where Cailou gets hurt and needs band-aids on his knees. This episode supports her newest obsession....band-aids! Let me go see what Erikson has to say about that.