It is beginning to dawn upon me that my son is not turning out to be the text-book baby that I thought he was.  When he was quite young, I found a personality test in Tracey Hogg’s “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer” and tried it out on Gavin.  At that time, my answers showed he was a “text-book” baby.  Now, I am beginning to suspect he is anything BUT a text-book baby.

No matter how many winding-down-before-sleep routines I try to establish with Gavin, none of them seem to work for very long.  After a while, when Gavin associates the routine with sleep, he begins to resent it and starts putting up a fight the moment he senses he is being put to bed.

These are the things he no longer allows me to do because he associates them with sleep:

• Can’t turn off the lights in the bedroom
• Can’t play slow, sleepy music
• Can’t put him into the carrier or sling
• Can’t rock him in certain positions or do certain “sleep-inducing” movements

The hubby and I have even tried pretending to sleep while Gavin “read” his books or played on the bed beside us.  The unfortunate thing about that is that Gavin has developed a penchant for WWF - he stands up on the bed and then throws himself on either Daddy or me.  The good news is that he doesn’t usually hurt himself when he does that.  The bad news is that he usually hurts Mummy and Daddy in the process.  Every time we see him get up, we cringe and brace ourselves for pain.

When he isn’t playing WWF, he’s busy dropping books on our heads, climbing over us and using our heads as stepping stones, or pulling my hair.  Suffice to say, it isn’t at all pleasant to have him “play by himself” while we sleep - if we can even sleep with half the things he does to us. 

Honestly, I’m running out of ways to help get him to sleep and he obviously isn’t any closer to getting to sleep on his own.  He continues to play and run around the room until he’s so tired, he starts bumping into things and falling down in a sleepy-stupor, but yet he doesn’t want to sleep nor does he fall asleep.  I have to hand it to this boy - his staying up power is rather impressive.

My MIL hasn’t been able to offer much advice because my hubby and SILs slept easily.  It looks like Gavin’s picked up another “undesirable” trait from my side of the family.  My mother recounted the times my brother would scream and cry until he fell asleep from physical exhaustion.  Well, I’ve already made that choice - I’m not going to let Gavin cry himself to sleep as long as I can do something about it.  Besides, I haven’t the heart to do it anyway.

Last week, we were out shopping at Carrefour and I saw another baby girl who looked like she might be around Gavin’s age.  She was sitting in the shopping trolley howling her head off until her body was twisted so that her head was pressed against the bars of the shopping trolley.  Her mother continued pushing the trolley, paying no regard to her daughter’s wails.  Her cries were so heartbreaking, I almost picked her up to pacify her myself.

I digress…  I guess I’ve finally come to accept the fact that I have a “high need” baby who has turned into a “high need” toddler.

My only concern now about Gavin being a “high need” toddler is that he is starting to attract a lot of “undesirable” labels - negative labels that I feel will only serve to make him more negative and harder to manage.  Although most of these labels are mentioned with humour, there’s always that underlying truth to a statement no matter how you try to twist it.

Without being unrealistic, I want to focus on Gavin’s positive points and let him know I appreciate all the good things about him before his negatives become the center of attraction.  So starting from today, I’m going to relabel him.

For instance, he isn’t a difficult toddler, he’s a high need toddler.  He isn’t naughty, he’s curious, he’s adventurous, and he’s inquisitive.

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