A new plan that might just work

Okay, so here's the plan. On Monday we're going to start sending him to daycare in underwear. If he wants a diaper, he'll have to ask for one. And once his diaper is changed, it's straight back to underwear again.

I ran the idea by my caregiver today and she's totally supportive. I'm feeling mildly optimistic.

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Yesterday I went to nursery school in the morning and had a blast! There were a couple of memorable moments I just have to share.

In the classroom they have a "pretend" car that kind of looks like a wooden bench with a steering wheel. The little guy loves to sit on it and pretend to drive. So yesterday when he started up the engine I decided to climb on and go for a ride too. No sooner than I had sat down, a little girl climbed on the car behind me. I asked the little guy where we were going.

"We're going skiing," he said.

I turned to the girl behind me and asked, "Would you like to come skiing too?" She nodded her head yes, so off we drove to the ski hill. A moment later the little guy hopped off of the car and ran across the room where the wooden toy building materials are located. He placed two flat boards on the ground and proceeded to ski around the room on them. The little girl who wanted to come skiing with us also grabbed a couple of boards and followed him down the trail. Within a minute, a couple of other kids joined in the fun. It was really neat to watch, especially since the little guy had initiated the whole thing.

Later on, after a nice long ski, the little guy decided to do a puzzle. He worked really hard at it and put all 40 pieces together by himself. When he was done, he started on a new activity. The second he had his back turned, one of the other little boys came by and tore apart all of the puzzle pieces. I saw the whole thing unfold and thought, "uh oh, this is not going to be pretty." When the little guy noticed what had happened to his puzzle, he looked at me in horror, "Hey!" he yelled, "Someone wrecked my puzzle." He immediately started trying to point fingers at one of the other kids who he suspected had sabotaged his masterpiece. In order to clear that poor kid's name I told him what I had seen.

I was amazed by the maturity of his response. He very calmly walked over to the puzzle wrecker and asked, "Did you take apart my puzzle?" The other kid came clean and said yes (of course, being 3-years old he had no idea he had even wronged anybody!). Instead of tattling or getting mad at him he just said, "That really wasn't very nice you know. That was my puzzle. You shouldn't wreck somebody else's puzzle."