Though we are eleven or so weeks rage-free (and that is huge, by the way!), my daughter has slowly slipped back into a pattern of tantrums, or, if not full-on, at least obstinate defiance at times.

I’m not huge on punishment, though it serves a necessary purpose. I’d much rather use logical consequences, but frankly, I wish I didn’t have to use them as often as I’ve needed to, recently.

So, in our ever-evolving approach to dealing with the myriad of issues our daughter has (and being rank newbies to most of them), we’re trying some new tactics.

Insomnia is still a huge issue in our household. For that, we’ve created a transition period between wakefulness to sleep. It’s too soon to tell whether this is helping or not.

As far as the enuresis goes, we’re cutting off drinks a couple of hours before bedtime. Additionally, we’re pulling the plug on the training pants. We think having them is creating a reliance on them. Case in point: Friday night is movie night in our home. We had a video store gift card from our “welcome home” shower, so we used it to purchase a couple of “pre-viewed” videos for the kids. Our daughter consistently makes the choice to soil her training pants when she’s engrossed in something and will clearly articulate after the fact that it’s because she didn’t want to stop the show to go potty. So, she uses the training pants as her personal port-a-potty!

We cut off usage of the training pants, but we tried to do it in a celebratory rather than punitive way. We did explain we had concerns after she was able to clearly state she understood she needed to use the restroom, but made a deliberate choice not to. However, we took her out to her favorite place for dessert and celebrated that she will no longer be in training pants. Further, we explained to her that should there be any accidents, intentional or otherwise, during the night, she will have to get up on her own, change her clothing, get the spare sheets, and change her bedding; after which she will need to put the sheets and clothing in the washing machine…all of this without deliberately (as in, “I need help”) waking or disturbing other household occupants.

She’s been out of training pants during the day for some time now, and had only been using them at night. However, she had been changing into the pants when she put her jammies on (and on movie nights that was often a couple of hours before actually going to bed!). Hubby and I realize we should have better monitored the situation to make sure she wasn’t putting the training pants on too soon.

We’re hoping the combination of the gift of more time with us before bedtime (positive attention, versus the former negative attention), and the motivator of feeling like a successful big girl (the celebration), will help her over this hurdle.

Clearly, it’s only one of many issues we have to deal with, but anything we can get off of our collective plates will be welcome!