Yeh finally Alesya off her bottle

Yeh I know I know we should have stopped alesya from taking the bottle years ago. But we didn’t want to do it the hard way.We just would like her to decide her own when she would like to stop taking milk using bottle.

Actually we can do this earlier if we enrolled her to school earlier.I did mention before that she was unhappy because we didn’t let her to go school earlier. Because we thought she was not ready yet.So we enrolled her to her kindy when she is 5 years old.Another reason is we don’t want her to get bored if she started school early.Yeh we should have thought about playschool before this.Semenyih manade playschool ok..:D

Anyhoo, to cut the story short, alhamdullillah we took the chance to tell her that she should stop using her bottle and use the cup/glass instead. We started this months before she actually started her academic year(cewah macam university pula) in her kindy in Jan 2013.We told her that when she started school, she must stop using her bottle and she agreed as she was really excited to go to school. So we thought this would be easy after all.I mean for her to stop using the bottle.

But when the school starts, she still insisted on her bottle.Though the intake was reduced as she only got back around 4ish PM and we didn’t pack the bottle and milk for her to bring them to school. We tried to give some other better offer(hehe I know I now we bribe her in a way) such as gonna give her more books, scooter and others but to no avail.

But recently, we went to Bukit Gambang Resort. It was a fun trip though it was a short one as we have ALIMKids class on the next day.So she really enjoyed the hotel stay.After seeing her excitement going to hotels, so we made the positive enforcement on this..muehehehe. We said that if she stopped her bottle, we will take her to another hotel in May.Yeh we actually booked the flight to Langkawi last year and this is the chance we can make use of the trip for our ‘Positive Enforcement’ reward hehe.

At first she seemed not to be bothered with the ‘offer’ as she continued her bottle feeding. But we used one of the “Mendorong Gaya Rasullullah” way which is to compliment when someone do good things so that others would be tempted to do good as well. The trick is like this, whenever Aisy did any good, we will always say “I’m so proud of you Aisy and we can go to hotel soon because you have been listening to mak and abah and you’re being such a nice girl by doing .And we said it loudly so Alesya could hear it too :D.

So the frequency of bottle intake is reduced a bit more. Alesya only feed on bottle during night time before she went to sleep. But everyday we would always remind her about the hotel thingy and about the promised she made before about stopping the bottle when she already goes to school.I mean a gentle reminder..not as a threat or anything.

So mid of February this year, finally Alesya stopped feeding on bottle.Alhamdullillah.It is quite accomplishment for us as parents.Though it took some time for her to stop, but it didn’t have to be a constant war between the child and the parents.If she stops by herself, that means it is a decision she made herself and she will stick with that decision for a long time rather than we use our power as parents and push her to follow our instruction though it is for her own benefit.

So this is a good news for us.Thought it might seem not such a big deal, but this really matters to me and of course Alesya.We can see that at the age of 4 plus, she can make and comfortable to make her own choices and decision but with some guidelines from the parents.Knowing Alesya, she is a very persistent child and will always want to win in a battle.But she’s the one who have the tender heart and always take care the other members of this family.This can be seen especially when I’m in bed, sick.She will always come to my bed and ask, “are you ok mak””I hope you’re getting better””mak da makan ubat?”.Unlike aisy, she will never come close to us when we are sick.Perhaps she doesn’t want to kacau us and just want us to have a good rest J

Each children is unique and they have their own strength and weaknesses.We need to identify their strength and make the most out of it.Focus on their strength and insyaa Allah they gonna be their best.