BAD with a Capital B!

The things you learn about your only child from his daycare teacher. At home, with no competition, he is typically well-behaved, with some moments of defiance and meltdowns. The meltdowns that, a year ago were intense, are even generally short-lived. Then he has to peacefully coexist (and play) with a dozen other 3-year-olds and that's when the problems begin.

SHARING

First off, Little Man has been having major issues with this. At home, he is the KING. Nobody to share with. Nobody to take his stuff—unless you count the dog, who often tries to steal his snacks. He can put a toy down and go back to it later and nobody else has taken it. That's a big part of the problem. Little Man is used to things being HIS and now he has to "take turns" and "share" and when he doesn't, he has a major meltdown.

Generally he isn't mad, he is heartbroken.

"I NEED the toy!"  "It's mine!"  

Or he takes what he wants and doesn't realize the consequences.

We are working on rewarding him for good behavior rather than reprimand him for bad. If he does share, he gets praise and a sticker or something small. I am trying not to punish him for what he does at school, but ...

Then we had absolute REFUSAL to do ANYTHING his teacher asked him to do.

No coloring.

No sitting for story time.

NO I DON'T WANT TO!

Oy.

Thankfully this isn't happening every day. And a lot of it is because... HE'S THREE!

Apparently three is a rough year. Pro-blogger "Scary Mommy" shared a funny blog post entitled: 10 REASONS AGE THREE IS MORE TERRIBLE THAN TWO and it's mostly true.

I just want the good days to greatly outnumber the BAD ones.  Is that wrong?

Oh, in other news... Little Man will be in big boy underwear starting on Saturday. Wish us luck. He's done really well in pull-ups this week. Barely any accidents and he's even waking up dry. It just "clicked" for him, like many said it would. I'll let you know how it goes in the next day or so.