Update to "Part 2"

CaptainSerious · February 2013

Last night, as soon as I got home, J gave me a completely unprompted, extremely sincere apology. He apologized both for peeing in his room and for lying about it, and asked if I could give him "one, last chance." He promised he wouldn't pee in his room again, and that he wouldn't need another chance on this.

After reading all your advice, I had already decided to drop the issue with him and ignore all further peeing issues, so this was a great importunity to agree, let him feel proud for taking responsibility, and reconcile the issue. He's still without TV, his train, and cars today for lying, but he's out of the pull-ups for good.

My husband told me that they had a really good conversation about what happened, and he told him he had urinated in his room because "he wanted to" and "to make mommy mad." He also mentioned something about it being dark, so my husband suggested us leaving a light on in the hall to make it a little less dark at night.

What was most interesting about that conversation is that my husband said that J engaged him, and wanted to discuss it. The nanny also told me this morning that as soon as she picked him up from school yesterday, the first thing he told her was that he would tell me he's sorry that night and ask for another chance. So this was all him--without anyone suggesting to him that he might want to apologize. THAT's all I wanted out of this whole thing--for him to take responsibility for this and realize that his room is not an okay place to urinate. And everything else about yesterday shows me that he didn't just do this to get out of wearing the pull-ups, so that's I'm really (cautiously) happy.

I want to give you the most sincere thanks. I read and seriously considered each and every one of your suggestions. Fred, I know that I may have seemed resistant to your approach, but I really, truly have been thinking about everything you said. I looked up that mistaken goals chart, and it makes a lot of sense.

If this happens again, I will disengage completely, and pretend I never knew about it. I hope it doesn't come to that, but I will just have to grit my teeth and wait for it to pass. In the meantime, I'm going to celebrate a pee-free room and enjoy my little boy!

Stacy092306 · February 2013

That's wonderful!

IRR · February 2013

Celebrating with you! Yea J. Way to go! Wink

missred75 · February 2013

So happy to read this! Hoping things stay 'pee free' for you!

CaptainSerious · February 2013

It's all Spanglish.

My Spanish isn't great. I can speak grammatically incorrect present tense, with a little future and almost no past tense. I almost never conjugate correctly. The boys, bless them, somehow understand my awful rendition. My husband's Spanish is worse.

So, when they first came home, they'd speak to me in Spanish, and I'd do my best to speak back in Spanish. After a short while, I'd say things in Spanish and English. Believe it or not, after 2-3 months of this, they were able to understand basically all the English.

M was eager to learn because he feared not being able to and wanted to be able to communicate with us, but J didn't even realize there were two different languages, yet alone that we spoke a different one than he had his whole life. After he finally got that concept, he really didn't feel a need to learn English, since he did just fine in Spanish. It wasn't until he was at a bilingual speech evaluation over the summer that I learned he understood almost everything. From that day on, I told him we'd only be speaking to him in English. He'd still surprise me from time to time when he'd respond to a conversation I thought was just between myself and my husband.

So, once each of them got to that point, everything became English. If there's something important I really need them to understand (now only J), or if we are in the car or on the phone or something and they can't use visual cues I also say it in Spanish.

M has entirely switched over to English. He won't speak Spanish even to Spanish speakers (he's afraid of making mistakes), but he will translate for us (from Spanish into English) if we have trouble understanding J.

There are some things in our house that will always be in Spanish (mealtime prayer, bedtime wish, and our family slogan "Familia Siempre!"). We would love the boys to keep both languages, but that will be hard for M, due to his learning difficulties. We will be happy to use more Spanish again once J can communicate fully in English. Both our nanny and house cleaner (to whom we have a close relationship) speak Spanish. We take the boys to "our" Peruvian restaurant at least twice a month. We are lucky to live in an area where they hear it frequently and there are actually lots of Peruvians nearby, so we keep them exposed.