More about Bob

Little Bob's personality continues to develop and reveal itself to us one bit at a time. Or maybe I'm just finally seeing the pattern. Anyway, he's a fascinating little puzzle that keeps me thinking...and on my toes.

First off, Robert is physically emotive. He feels emotion and expresses emotion almost entirely with physical movement. Joy, anger, silliness, jealousy, hunger, and excitement all bubble out of him as arm swings, twirls, running, head butts, hitting, face snuggles, stomping, and tackles. Any emotion can be expressed by any physical act at any time. Arm twirls don't always mean hunger and throwing doesn't always mean jealousy. It's more confusing than that. Once, he got so excited and silly that he bit Alice in the belly. Another time, he was so mad that he collapsed on the floor and slapped himself three times on the head. Yesterday, he was so thrilled to see Alice that he smacked her in the face with his sippy cup, then he was so jealous of the attention she got that he jumped and cried and threw things all over the room. This morning, he was so happy that he slapped himself all over and did push-up motions in the air and threw more things. When he comes running at you with a smile, you don't know if he's going to hug you or grab your toes or throw something at your face because ALL of those things would be normal for him in a good mood and expressing joy. I love him and live in fear of his flailing limbs at all times :)

As a result of Robert's physical expression of emotion, we've been doing a lot of explaining to Alice ("that's how he shows he's happy") and a lot of behavior modification ("uh-oh, we don't hit people with [insert object name here]"). It's a slow process, but getting better now that we discovered a more effective "time-out" strategy. Solitary confinement doesn't phase the boy. One minute in his room is a vacation! No, it turns out plain old "confinement" is a better deterrent. We just snuggle him on our lap for a minute and he's begging to get out and determined not to repeat the offensive behavior...until he forgets the next day (*sigh*). At least he hasn't hit anyone with the same object twice, even over a couple of days, so something is sticking :)

I'm looking forward to more one-on-one time with him once preschool starts again (Alice is eager to get back to Mrs. Strom, too). Now that Robert has (slowly, but almost) transitioned to one nap in the early afternoon, I'll have mornings with him. Maybe I'll go to morning aerobics again? Maybe we'll get into a Robert-aged playgroup? I don't know yet. We'll see.

In the meantime, we get to find/teach/explore less destructive forms of physical expression :)