息子が唾を吐く！/My Son Spits!

This happened over a four-month period when my son, K, was three years old.

My daughter was only a few months old, so I had no room in my heart and the floor was always littered with spitting rags.

I know there are many tough times in parenting, however it was a long and uniquely stressful four months.

If you are having problems with your child spitting, I am sure you are reading this in the hope that one day it will end.

I was preparing dinner when I casually looked at K and saw him spitting on the floor.

I said, ‘What’s wrong? Do you feel sick?”

K: “No.”

K replied in a normal way. A while later I look at K and he is spitting on the floor again.

I immediately thought that　(This is a case where I shouldn’t be angry. If I get angry his spitting will start in earnest.)

I decided so, and pretending that it was nothing to worry about, I wiped the spit with a tissue.

I tried to end it calmly, wanting him to think that spitting was not an act that would attract his mother’s attention.

While I was upset, K had just recovered from a cold and his mouth must have felt strange, so I didn’t pay that much attention to him.

The next day he was still spitting on the floor. I still managed to stay calm.

I said, “It’s dirty if you spit here. Why don’t you use a tissue?”

I admonished K in a normal tone of voice.

I feel that K often sees through my upset and emotions. I also felt like he was testing me, knowing that spitting in the room was a bizarre and outrageous act and I would surely get angry.

No matter how calm I was, no matter how many times I wiped the floor pretending to be unconcerned, he wasn’t going to stop spitting.

After a whole day of mopping the floor of spit,I thought,

(why am I wasting my time doing this?)

(Is K crazy?)

(What if this goes on for the rest of my life?)

I was thinking about it and I lost control of my capacities very easily.

That evening I was shouting and yelling.

“Hey! What are you doing! That’s disgusting! Wipe the floor yourself!”

K: “No! No! I won’t wipe!”

K resisted and was angry and half-crying.

When he calmed down, he was spitting all over the floor again without a care in the world.

His spitting continued for the next four months, whether my anger that day had anything to do with it or not.

Once I got emotionally angry, but decided to not act out again, believing that if I just kept up the attitude of not being interested in spitting, he would eventually get bored and stop.

Every time he spat in the corridor, at the entrance or corner of the room, or on the floor, I wiped it off quickly with my foot.

(I cut up old towels for spitting and placed them on the floor beforehand.)

If he saw me wiping, he would spit again, so I wiped when K was not looking.

The discomfort I felt when I unknowingly stepped on his spit was disgusting.

Sometimes K stepped on his spit and it was smeared out on the floor.

After some days since the spitting started, he now began to spit even if no one was watching.

(What?! What is he spitting for? Isn’t he trying to get the attention of us parents?)

I was confused.

Like a person peeing in secret, he would spit in other rooms and come back, or when I thought he hadn’t spit for a few hours, he would spit dozens of times in a row, as if to make up for it.

But for him, it still seemed like he was taking it out on me. The more irritated he was, the more often he spat.

Fortunately, he never spat on remote controls or objects that are difficult to clean , as I saw on the internet. (He did spit once on the back side of a BUMBO, which was horrifying.)

Basically he spits on the floor at home and on the floor when he’s out and about, so it was easy to clean up.

He once spat at a friend’s new house, once in the hallway of our shared flat and a few times when we were out.

In the later stages of spitting, he increasingly forgot to spit.

Around that time he started preschool and it seemed that his spitting would increase, but it decreased.

However, he did spit once, perhaps to test his teacher.

Teacher: “This morning K spat on the floor. I scolded him a little harder.”

I think this was almost the last time he spat.

I have a tense feeling when I remember the heyday of spitting.

I could hardly look after him and play with him because all I did was look after my a few months old daughter. It’s sad to think what he must have felt.

K was not a jealous child after his sister was born, and he understood in theory that looking after a baby is hard work. As evidence of this, he resisted calling me on many occasions.

Now I can picture K’s little back playing by himself.

My daughter loved breastfeeding and, moreover, breastfeeding was extremely tiring for me and I could only do the bare minimum.

Of course, sometimes he would forcefully ask me to play with him, but when I told him that I couldn’t play with him now, he gave up easily.

I was always taking care of my daughter and his little impatience was piling up and I wonder if he had an outburst.

Raising a child is still hard work, but now that I feel more relaxed, I can finally get some parenting tips and advice into my head.

For example, I heard that when a child is reluctant to go to preschool, just by spending a little time playing with him or her with one-on-one attention, the child will feel more satisfied and will not linger on the way to preschool.

When I put this into practice, I found that the problem was solved surprisingly quickly.

I understand the theory, but it’s not easy when the youngest child is small.

In fact, not only did he spit, but he also had a rough time extending the kitchen tap and releasing water sloshing into the living room, throwing things, hitting things, peeing on the floor, etc.

This is what the devil’s three-year-olds are like.

I regret that I should have made a little time just for K back then.