So last night I left to go to the grocery store after the children went to bed. When I got back Eric told me that he had to go in and put Gracie’s diaper on five differernt times because she was taking it off and throwing it out of her crib, even after Eric put shorts on her. As it got progressively worse, Eric threatened to spank Gracie and eventually carried through on two separate occasions. Of course it was barely a tap and mostly just to let her know that he was serious.
Regardless, when he told me the story I said, “what did she say when you walked in the room?” and he goes, “Well, it was weird because she kept saying Porter.” Ahhh, I get it now. What Eric didn’t know is that Porter is going through this stage where he hears us say something like, “Gracie, please don’t do that again or you’ll have to go into time out” and then he will run over to her and whisper in her ear to “do it again.” Of course she complies as she is almost three and does whatever Porter says to do.
So this morning I pull Porter aside and ask him if he was prompting Gracie to take off her diaper last night after Daddy came in and told her not to. He then admits to telling her to do it. When Gracie got up I asked her why she took off her diaper and she said, “Porter says so!” with her brilliant smile.
My heart just sunk. I realize that this is just something that we are dealing with developmentally but to know that my sweet baby girl got in so much trouble last night because her brother was telling her to do something that he KNEW was wrong. It was not cool.
So in order to make sure that he understood that we were very serious about his behavior, we decided not to go to the pool today and spend the day in the sunshine. Hopefully this will be something that can be nipped in the bud quickly.
