When Terrible Twos Hit Early AKA Times To Pull Hair Out To

Poststructural Pub
1

Is it common for a fourteen month old to crawel out of his crib?

Heaven help me, I think I’m going to need it! :boggle:

My second son is very different than the first, not just in looks and in personality but in his capacity for trouble.

He’s been walking for about a month, still a little tipsy, kinda has a penguin waddle thing going still. He falls a lot and since a few weeks ago when he fell and cut his eyebrow open on an end table (table is now gone, but the scar remains, had to take him into the doctor and they “glued” it back together) he cries and fits nearly every time he falls now. (Which is like, four or five times an hour.)

The “child proof” latches that you put on cupboards no longer work. He’s discovered that he can squeeze his arm through the gap, grab things and sometimes pull them back through. It still slowed him down for a while, but now he’s gotten much faster at it to where I’m just going to have to totally empty out everything, having no idea where to put it all yet as space is rather limited in our apartment.

He seems to think that opening the oven, trying to reach the top of the stove and playing with the dishwasher are facinating activities. :astonished:

He thinks it’s funny to throw things at people’s heads.

He hates going to sleep, he won’t let me hold him until he falls asleep anymore, he fights it and wants to keep playing and the only way we’ve managed recently is to lay him down with his blanket and bear in his crib and let him play/fuss for a while until he get’s so tired and bord that he falls asleep. If he wakes up in the night (which happens frequently) he likes to holler until he wakes up his brother (so he can have some company/entertainment) and there are many nights where, exhausted, we’ve brought our older son in with us, making a bed for him on the floor and gone back to sleep… just left baby to laugh, holler, then finally cry and fuss himself back to sleep. (Now we can’t even do that… don’t know what we are going to do yet.)

He’s into everything… just when you think something is okay and/or out of reach he finds a way to prove you wrong. He loves to try to find ways to climb onto everything… bookcases (which have now been removed except for one short, heavy, anchored to the wall one) chairs… tables… my computer desk.

I had a “play pen” for him downstairs in the family room which was made by placing the two couches with their arms together at an angle to form two sides and the corner with the two walls forming the other two sides. It was a totally safe place where he could be and I wouldn’t have to worry what he was doing if I had to take a shower, help my other son with something, answer the door, cook dinner, etc. This worked until this past weekend when I came in after putting dinner in the oven to find him sitting on the couch with a look of triumph on his little face. I placed him back in and watched as he climbed right back out. He climbs in and out at will now.

Last night, I put him to bed, went to get a blanket, came back in to find him nearly out of his crib. A modern, standard sized crib with its standard sized mattress down as low as it will go in the crib. His leg was resting over the top rail, his arms on the rail as well, doing a fair job at heaving himself up and over, another moment and he would have had it. The problem is that the top of the crib is a lot higher than the couch, has less places to grab/rest for support that he can reach and use during an actual climb and has a sharp edged bar along the bottom that holds the side of the crib up and allows the side to go up and down. I’m afraid he’s going to fall wrong and get gashed open again or land wrong and seriously break something (like his neck)! Last night was a long night. :frowning:

What do you do when your baby’s ability to climb/get into things so far outstrips his understanding and in some cases, ability to be careful and/or just not do something? If he was a little taller so he could reach to climb out more safely, if he was old enough to even start to get the concept of sleeping in a big kid bed, if I wasn’t afraid that my sleepwalking six year old would leave the doors open to the bedroom, the bathroom and then leave the toilet seat wide open for “I don’t feel like sleeping in the middle of the night” baby to climb out, toddle in and drown in or that he’d climb in the tub and start in on the water there! (Toilet latches and turning the water heater down only go so far… and unfortunately, my hubby and I are all too often deep sleepers and might not hear him in time). Then of course, there are the stairs (which he doesn’t do well on yet) and the whole rest of the house for him to get into while we’re asleep. I just know he’s going to try if we don’t figure out a way to stop him.


AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH! I love the little fellow dearly and want to keep him safe, but he’s fast outstripping my ability to know how to keep him safe… all so worried and frustrated at the same time. This is stuff that I didn’t think kids got really into until they were a bit older, yet he’s not even on the close side to two yet. If he’s acting like this now… :open_mouth: (Or maybe he’ll just get it over with sooner? We’ll hope???)



Has anyone else around here had a child like this? What did you do?


Yeah, “this to shall pass”… yeah, yeah…



:really: Sara (who is on the verge of pulling her hair out… if her baby doesn’t pull it all out first)

2

Sara—Other people will answer who know something about children. But I think you have a very smart little boy there. And you are very right. He does not know about danger and he cannot be reasoned with until he is about 3, from what I have read. So you are right to worry about his safety. I think my husband’s little brother was like this from the stories they tell. They did all survive! I know that is no consolation. And I don’t envy your difficulties. I am looking forward to seeing the comments of the people who have children. Good luck. Hang in there. :slight_smile:

3

I lived to talk about it or here the stories told by my mother about me! But alas never had children of my own, so I can’t help you there, except a friend of mine has one the same age as yours and the stories are identical!

Good luck and then there is duct tape!

MarkB

4

14 months? 14 MONTHS??? HA! Noah (my second) climbed out of his crib at 8 months! Both mine walked at 10 months, which just happened to co-incide with Christmas for both of them (aka - look at me jerk the tree back and forth!).

Are your two sleeping in the same room? Mine were (4 years difference in age). I put Noah in a toddler bed (uses the mattress from the crib) and put a baby gate in the doorway. Nate could climb over the gate if he needed to use the restroom, etc. - but Noah couldn’t climb the gate. At age, oh, about 1 1/2, I put Noah in a regular bed (actually, they got bunk beds - Nate on top). Still kept the baby gate up for a while, so Noah didn’t go cruising around the house late at night.

On the cabinet thing (I actually did this when my oldest was little) I finally just put the tupperware stuff, and pots and pans and canned goods on the bottom shelves, and anything breakable, etc. on the top shelves. Nate actually managed to pull one of those electric plug covers off when he was 5 months old, so we had to go to the kind that you replaced the entire plug with a screw in thing. I also plugged all the electronics (TV, stereo, etc) into a surge protector mounted 5 ft off the floor on the back of a cabinet so that they couldn’t turn the TV on, etc.
Oh - and I installed GFI’s in their bedroom (ground fault interrupt plugs) so if they DID manage to stick something in them, the electricity would turn off immediately.

Noah did some other “daring” stuff - he climbed a 2 story ladder to watch his dad working on the roof - I think he may have been all of 2 at the time. He also managed to get the screen off his window and climb out on the porch roof (tin roof, slick, and about 15 feet or more off the ground). THAT went back on with screws, and the window had a stop installed to prevent it from going high enough for him to climb out again.

Believe it or not - after all that and many more incidents, the oldest (now 18 ) only had one broken bone, and that was a stress fracture from cross country last year. Noah (now 14) broke his arm in 5th grade playing football. That’s it. No stitches, no repeated tetnus shots other than boosters, no running to emergency rooms.

Good luck. It seems that just when you thought you had everything “fixed” the little buggers do you one better!

5

Our son was exactly like this…we called him Mr Active Man.

He was full of boundless energy. Wanted into everything. And was too young to understand why some things were not meant for the hands of children.

We eventually had to enforce a very strict sleep/nap schedule, which he took to eventually. We also constantly were repeating things like “you don’t touch the stove, it’s hot!” even when it wasn’t, so that hopefully repetition would sink in.

This phase really does pass, though. It only FEELS like forever :wink:

(editing because my spelling really sucks when I’m stirring marsala sauce..heh)

6

{{{{{{{{{{{Sunny}}}}}}}}}

Sorry, no words of advice. But I want to let you know I feel for you!

The only comment I could think of, other than “There but for the grace of God go I” was when you mentioned laying him down to sleep. My instinct says “Well, yeah. . . .”. When I baby sat this was standard acceptable get-the-baby-to-sleep protocol. Let them sit in the crib, play and fall asleep. I don’t get what the issue is.

All the other stuff. . .whew! Ignore the ‘I’ve fallen and I’m dying’ fits unless of course there IS blood and guts.

I’m sure you’re doing great!
Tyg

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Don’t worry, Sara. Speaking from experience I can tell you that the first twenty-six years are the worst. :smiley:

Steve

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At least.

Ask my mom.

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Are you still living with your mom? Judging from the wisdom displayed in all your posts I would have said you were at least 63. :laughing:

Steve

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I have finally found a solution for all these problems. My Colin is an “active” boy. He is 3. But he is my grandson. Give him to mommy! Works every time.

Ron :smiley:

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I only live with her in her heart (I dare presume). But you never know, right? :wink: Anyway, I can safely say that I caused her and my father plenty of concern into my adulthood. Some of it was even well-founded.

But only thirteen years “wise” beyond my age? I guess it’ll have to do. :wink:

Why 63 of all numbers? Are there, like, cutoff dates for certain characteristics?

12

I so don’t envy you! The day the gates came down for good in our house was one happy day!

One thing we had was an oven lock so our kids couldn’t pull open a hot oven on themselves. This works pretty well, unless the kid is really determined and breaks the lock (which our son did). I think they have it in Toys R Us or online.

http://www.securityworld.com/child/ovenlock.html

If your son is really bad about climbing, you may want to consider tethering the TV, dresser, etc. to the wall. A little 3 year old girl was killed recently in the next town when she pulled the dresser over on herself while her parents were asleep (trying to climb the drawers like stairs). They never heard a sound.

http://meghanshope.org/cms/node/3

Good luck! I don’t envy your position.

Robin

13

Its only for the first 20 some years!

14

My wife only lets me get these out if I’ve given her enough to drink…

:blush:

15

My grandaughter is 2 and this seems to be pretty typical for her too. Into everything, doesn’t stop until she literally drops, fights sleep til the last.

I don’t remember my own two being this much of a handful, but I also have to remind myself that with barely a year between them, they kept each other occupied. My grandaughter has no one else to play with, therefore it’s up to the whole world to entertain her. :astonished:

16

Just be glad there’s only one.

Twins can boost each other out of the crib.

Twins can work together to puch a chair over to where they can climp up mon the counter. Or the stove.

Just imagine your little guy, then imagine another one, just like him, following him around and thinking up the stuff the his brother missed.

You people who have your babies one at a time are slackers.

17

Its a climbing harness…flatlander! :astonished:

18

So THAT’S what it’s really used for!
:wink:

19

At that same age, my younger son vaulted himself out of the crib. He later became a competitive gymnast and only just “retired” this last April (he’s 12). We got rid of the crib and bought a youth bed but he had become so used to escaping the crib and sleeping on the couch that we would later find him on the couch from the bed in the middle of the night. After getting the bed second hand but buying a new mattress for it, I can honestly say he never spent a whole night in it. By the time we could reason with him, we bought a bunk bed set and he use that.

He always landed on his feet, fwiw…

If you can afford it, etc. maybe some kind of tumbling activity will drain a little juice out of the nipper.

One good thing was that I remember fairly noticeable behavior changes about every six months. So maybe this particular stage shall pass.

20

Missy… you’ve made me feel so much better… or perhaps it’s just shock. (EIGHT MONTHS!!! :boggle: Doesn’t that qualify you for some kind of mother award or something?)

Shows things could be worse. My son could have started walking earlier, which would have made things crazier earlier… Not that he didn’t try. His problem is he’s got these short little legs, long body and ah, biggish head. He’s just got a big bone structure all around (takes after the hubbies side; brother once injured his knee and the doctor was so shocked about the x-rays that he called up other doctors in the middle of the night saying things like “you won’t believe this, you’ve gotta see”. Apparantly, the doctor was amazed at the size of my brother-in-laws bones, you’d think he’d discovered the missing link or something by the way he reacted. :laughing: )

Anyhoo, Sylas. The way his body is balanced (or rather, not) the upper half of his body is REALLY larger than his bottom half, causing him to be top heavy which only further complicated the learning to balance thing that kids go through when they start to walk. That is also why he’s still walking rather like a penguin. He’ll grow into himself eventually I suppose. He’s got strong legs though now, that’s for sure.

Yes, both kids are in the same room. There is five years difference between them. Sylas is so into climbing I’m concerned he’ll just climb over the gate, but I guess it’s worth a try, you never know, even if it just works for a while.

Tyg… Um, the only reason I mentioned the holding him/laying him down bit is not that I think it’s a big deal to just lay them down and let them play/fuss themselves to sleep, it’s that I wish that he’d hold still so I could hold him for an extended while period anymore. It would have been nice instead of putting him in his crib and sitting there watching him until he fell asleep (oh look, there’s mommy, how exciting, now I really really don’t want to sleep) to prevent him from climbing out the other night to instead be able to rock him to sleep while watching tv or somthing until we can arrange another solution. Time craweled by at a boring snails pace just trying to be quiet, waiting for that long.

I liked the way you put it: “‘I’ve fallen and I’m dying’ fits”. I do pretty much ignore them if he’s not broken/bleeding, he’s sure to grow out of it, it’s just been really bad lately since he got hurt bad. It was a bit traumatic for him I think, the pain and the holding him down while we wiped the blood off his face and checked out the cut, the doctor strapping him down from head to toe to keep him still while cleaning the cut out and putting him back together. It wasn’t a happy day for him (and it wasn’t very fun for mom and dad either).

Robin… I have the tipsy things tethered to the walls already, but that oven lock looks like it’s going to be a must have. Says it can be used for the fridge to… no doubt we’ll eventually be getting two of them knowing this child.


My first thought was… oooh! Baby shackles! :wink: (Hubby had just commented that it was a pity they didn’t have a version of chains and shackles for toddlers… totally in a kidding silly sort of way of course.) :smiley:



Well folks, it looks like perhaps this is actually not unusual behavior for a fourteen month old. Perhaps instead it’s my six year old who was the unusual one and I was spoiled by him, therefore not being prepared for what Sylas is doing. (Jordyn, when he was two, picked up a few stray pills from Grandma’s purse and instead of eating them, gave them back to Grandma and he never stuck anything in his mouth that wasn’t food he’d been given, not even when he was teething.) Guess I just was taken off guard since he’s not THAT close to being two yet (which was the age I’d asociated this stuff with) and that it seemed to hit all at once (it’s gotten crazy just within the last month). ACTIVE doesn’t even begin to properly describe…

Yes… let’s be grateful that this baby is not twins and hope that his behavoir changes FOR THE BETTER six months from now (yeah, nice hoping there, no chance with my luck. Instead, prepare for increased insanity.) :stuck_out_tongue:

It is nice to hear of people surviving this stuff though… cause at the moment…


:slight_smile: Sara