The art of Strategizing is Critical to Parenting

En seems to be adjusting well to our new home, with the exception of the bathrooms. And it really took some strategizing to overcome this tricky new problem..

For some unknown reason to date, En has been kicking up a major tantrum during his bath, refusing to let us bath him at all. And put up a mighty resistance he did. He screamed and wailed all through the bath and continued for quite some time after. That went on for the 2 days when he was home (before that we put him at the nanny's so that we can all focus on unpacking)...

For a boy who loves water and sprinklers, it seems really strange.

Quite spooky actually, and if we have not done our usual religious stuff with the house, I will be quite spooked with his extreme reactions to both bathrooms in the house.
So to eliminate all causes, we asked Super Nanny to come over and see if En really disliked the bathroom or he just started to dislike bathing with the maid (Babies can be so fickle). In any case, Nanny and her family been missing En and came specially to visit the 1st weekday that En did not go over. She chided that we did not give her adequate notice period for her to prepare herself that En is no longer gonna be in her care... Quite upset she really was. So we decided that we will place En with her every Saturday so we can continue to do our marketing at the great Chinatown market, en route from her place. And we think it will be great for En to continue growing amidst her warm and joyous family and her kids..

Back to the bath, so even Super nanny could not get En to bath without crying. Perhaps he was not used to the new place, we all rationalise. He would go into the bathroom to watch Xuan bathing, but when it is his turn to bath, he cried heaven and earth... So its not the bathroom per se. It is Him not wanting to bath in both the bathrooms. Ok, so that is the problem, now the solutioning begins..

So while musing about how to tackle this thorny issue, I walked En over to his cousin's place, thinking to borrow some bubbles solution to lure him into the bathroom as Hubby suggested. While playing with his cousin's toy, he was fascinated with a Bert and Elmo waterwheel. So we borrowed that as well thinking it might come in handy - that is the one sitting in at the end of the bath tub.


And voila it worked. After a stenunous morning bath, where we still have to stuggle with his reluctance to bath, my mum and Melanie were able to bath him without crying in the evening, but that is after going through lots of distraction using a combination of the bubbles, his usual water toys, and leveraging on his fascination with the Bert and Elmo waterwheel. And the key lies in focussing his attention on play rather than on the bath. And so we have kept that toy deliberately in the bathroom so that En could only play with it during bath time.

Sometimes, I think parenting requires a lot of strategizing and the keen ability to know when and how to offer the right props/ incentives. Like I lamented to En after his first wailing bath, I do not have the answer as to why he cries so hard during bath when he loves to take baths! All the baby books could not provide me with that answer. However, we will have to devise strategies how to overcome the problem. There are tonnes of other problems which require strategizing, such as overcoming the night feed so that baby will sleep through he night, getting baby to travel in the car seat, getting babies to differentiate between night and day, getting babies to like food etc..

So now I am beginning to think that parenting trains one to be a brilliant strategist. And related to that is patience, which is the other key to success and victory. One must have the patience to try various strategies and to analyse the next steps should a particular strategy fail. Well, then again, parenting has never been for the weak yeah! haha.