Any toddler tips to share?

this is followed by an explanation for said reprimand

This is important – once they have had time to calm down, they need to be told why they were told to sit there.

more effective, get them to explain why they had to stand there. Only if they can’t should you then explain. They need to be able to work out for themselves what caused the time out, not just have it dished to them.

They need to be able to work out for themselves what caused the time out, not just have it dished to them

yes yes yes.

TM

more effective, get them to explain why they had to stand there. Only if they can’t should you then explain. They need to be able to work out for themselves what caused the time out, not just have it dished to them.

Agreed – if they are older, but not at 2.

We do that with ours now. And they don’t get off with a sorry unless they mean it. (One of them now just shouts ‘sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry’ constantly as soon as she does something wrong assuming it will get her off.

Agreed – if they are older, but not at 2.

Mine too young for this, not a chance of getting him to explain. Shall definitely keep that in mind in 6 months time.

One of them now just shouts ‘sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry’ constantly as soon as she does something wrong assuming it will get her off.

When she is in the wrong mood our 3.9 year old responds to the slightest chastisement by silently marching herself off to her room and staying there for a while! 😯

We call her the “ThreeNager”.

Any toddler tips to share

Never, ever try to reason with them! Bribery & coercion are the only way to get on 🙂

Not quite a toddler, but I was reading with my 4 and 11/12ths yr old the other night and he said something funny (not read something funny, said it in response to something he’d read), so I laughed. Cue much wailing amd saying “don’t laugh at me!”. My reply was “I would be a pretty horrible person to laugh AT you, wouldn’t I. Do you think I’m a horrible person?” – to which he replied “Yes” and then proceeded to reel off a few choice reasons why I won’t be winning Dad of the year any time soon in his opinion. Kids eh, who’d have em! 🙂

Woody2000, I’m often reminded of this quote from terminator…

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

🙂

When she is in the wrong mood our 3.9 year old responds to the slightest chastisement by silently marching herself off to her room and staying there for a while!

Bingo 😀

We’ve given her a bean bag – when she’s angry about something she’s allowed to go throw that in her room. What’s funny is that she’s got such a short attention span – gets angry, gets distracted easily, then remembers she’s mean to be angry and runs off to her room for some therapeutic throwing, then comes back, and repeats.

When she’s procrastinating I occasionally do the counting down from 5 thing. Always works so far – just as well as I haven’t quite worked out what I’m going to do when I get to zero…

Cue much wailing amd saying “don’t laugh at me!”.

Yeah – have to carefully explain that we’re not laughing at her, we’re laughing because she said something funny.

Still sometimes say something wrong, though – then she sprints off to her room and there’s the sound of the beanbag hitting the wall a few times 😉

And, just recently, I’ve had good reason to be very glad I made a non-slamming door for her room when I built it.

We don’t have a naughty step. Occasionally we have ‘go to your room’, but the real punishment is our disapproval – that upsets them. I think that lots of people resort to a naughty step far too early when the kids don’t really understand what’s going on. You have to be quite grown up to understand crime and punishment imo. Our almost 5yo would, but our 2.5yo would not.

When we need them to do something we always try and explain why we want them to do it. Sometimes this involves bare-faced lying – “No, you can’t have crisps for breakfast – it’s just not allowed. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules”. Of course I DO make the rules.

Haven’t read the thread so I dare say I’m repeating what every other parent has said, but anyway…

Teeth brushing – restrain child on floor by kneeling gently on it, pinch nose with one hand, brush child’s teeth with the other. Result – clean teeth plus child learns quickly to brush without Dads help.

Feeding – provide food that was yesterday’s favourite and has been requested all day, refuse to provide anything else when child refuses to eat, advise child that it will become weak and feeble if it doesn’t eat and the baby will soon be bigger than it. Result – child will eat a healthy breakfast the next morning.

Toddlers are specifically designed to be small and light enough to be picked up and moved to wherever they need to be, and thereafter easily restrained with one hand.

Be careful with the old naughty step routine because it can backfire. My 2yo put me on the naughty step for knocking over one of his toys, I can tell you 38 minutes sat on a step is a looong time….

“you can either come and put your shoes on by yourself OR I will come and grab and put your shoes on you myself in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.”

& always follow through & don’t give up if they start bawling, after 3 months he/she will be at your feet by 3.

Good cop / bad cop. Really? Ours seems to respond better to a uniform approach from mum and dad so she appreciates consistently what is right and wrong.

Whoever said choose your battles had it right.

Otherwise, best advice I had… Things change. The good stuff will get worse and the bad stuff will get better. Don’t be too smug and don’t be too worried.

mine so far in order of deployment as the boy develops.

Restraint: tell child why wrong then hold child upright for count of age in months repeat why done wrong kiss and end ” I love you crankbrat but you must not throw stones at the greenhouse”

As above but get the child to say what done wrong.

warning followed by loss of a bed time story crankbrat starts off on 4 stories.

reward chart with stickers building to a weekend treat like a ride on a bus.

The counting down as funnily as possible 5 “crankbrat to the bathroom clean to teeth” 4 “emergency teeth clean” 3 “preparing to unleash spiky daddy” 2 “to bathroom please full name to bathroom” 1 “unleash the spiky daddy” 0 is the point I pick him up and carry him in he normally protests and agrees to go back to his starting point and go under his own steam. we rarely get past 3 without him saying no no no counting and running to comply.

food, he always has his alter ego woofy the woofmeister with him at the table . when he unreasonably refuses to eat woofy is sad and has to leave the table if he wont eat and only agrees to return if CB has two spoonful’s.

life is a daily battle at 32 months but maintenance of effort and consistency appear to work. At the end of the day he is an individual with a developing personality and it is in it’s own way great fun to try and maintain just enough control. Now he can argue and reason it is even funnier.

Counterpoint – my kids do not respond well to being physically forced to do things.

Nothing to add that hasn’t already been said (and I’ve learnt a bit of here myself!) But, saw this video the other day and it seems appropriate to the topic, this kid has some excellent negotiating/debating skills!

I found a routine that gets things done early works well with ours (3 year old) as he seems more amenable first thing. So he gets up when his alarm goes off and wonders into our room, he usually then discusses something completely random for a few minutes while I wake up. Then its straight into the bathroom for toilet and getting dressed and then its straight down stairs for breakfast. If I let him choose what he wants and help get it ready then he’s more likely to eat it. He can still be a bit awkward and slow but it doesn’t matter so much as i can carrying on having my breakfast, getting ready for work etc. whilst he’s messing around. He also knows that if he finishes early he watch CBeebies whilst i’m sorting myself out. It’s then just coat and shoes required to get out the door.

i have to admit that our “hold your ears and stand over there while you think about what you’ve done” routine is the last resort (that is before one of us shouts loudly at said child)
the look of disapproval is the first step…this is followed by explaining to them why we are disappointed with said behaviour
if that doesn’t work then it escalates to
“eat your food or you go hungry”
“tidy your toys away or they go in the charity bag for a child who doesn’t have any”
“put your shoes/clothes on or they go in the charity bag”
“go and pack your bags, we’re calling the police to come and take you away for being naughty”
“pick a toy that we can throw in the bin for you being naughty”
…these idle threats work for our eldest.
other methods we’ve used also include
also telling him that God will be very very saddened at the way he is acting
threatening to leave him behind/not take him if we are going somewhere
removing stickers from his reward chart
or having a conversation along the lines of
“who’s the boss of this house?”
“mummy/daddy”
“who should you listen to?”
“the boss of the house”
“who am i”
“the boss”

we find that we have to be very creative as parents to counter their creative ways of misbehaving…we treat each act of mischief on its individual merits and one of the above measures is called upon…but we would never do this as a united pair. like i said if one plays bad cop the other automatically plays good cop…mainly to explain to them the reasons for our response and to explain the repercussions of their actions/behaviour.
our youngest is 21 months old so we can only implement the disapproving looks/naughty corner at the moment but with the eldest who is 6 and a half its easier…but as he gets older i fear we will have to get more creative in how we reprimand him.

Counterpoint – my kids do not respond well to being physically forced to do things.

You clearly aren’t beating them hard enough.

Teeth brushing – restrain child on floor by kneeling gently on it, pinch nose with one hand, brush child’s teeth with the other. Result – clean teeth plus child learns quickly to brush without Dads help.

Amauter – Sit child on your lap sideways with their right arm under your arm pit so it can’t move, hold their left arm with your left. This leaves your right arm free to brush their teeth (from my mum, special needs teacher!) don’t have to do it these days (3 and a half)

This morning I got her mostly ready for school while she was still half asleep in bed, poor mite has been poorly.

The greatest threat for her though, when we’re late: “If you don’t hurry up we’ll have to go in the car, not on Bikey” She does love riding to school on her bike 😀

“Don’t mess with the bull young man, you’ll get the horns!” usually does the trick.

One thing I forgot to mention: if all else fails, make sure you video the tantrum. Pure gold when he turns up 18 years later with his first girlfriend 🙂

Lots of good advice here.

Part of being uncooperative can be them wanting to have some control. So give them choices. Let them choose what they want to wear. Don’t stop them wearing odd socks etc

Choose your battles. If they don’t want to eat that’s OK. But they have to stay at the table while everyone else finishes. Most times they will start eating again.

Or make it a competition. First one to finish their broccoli is the winner.

Oh and enjoy it. Just wait until they are teenagers.

I just think about how I’d like it if someone was trying to force me to do what they wanted all the time.

Or make it a competition. First one to finish their broccoli is the winner.

That only works if you have competitive kids 🙂

mrsdt’s has a good way of dealing with the kids (2.5 and 4.75) squabbling over toys.
She just describes each child’s annoyance back to them. Eg. Oh yes, your realy upset, you wanted to play with said toy and HT’s playing with it, then in front of HT you are trying to play withstand toy and it’s very annoying because PT keeps taking it off you, that must be so annoying…
It lets both of them know that you get their annoyance, and they seem to understand that both of them are not getting what they want…
Then say something like “do you think you could come up with a way to play together with the toy?”

Another vote for choices and picking the right battles.

Routine. Routine. Routine.
Reward good behaviour and don’t reward bad in any way at all.

Buy this excellent book:

Intersting thread.
Li’l J (19months) has started playing up last couple of months..
He has a very quick southpaw that would make a boxing champion proud,
when he lands one on me I just tell him I’m sad & make him do more house work; mopping , hoovering & wiping. 😀

Routine is not important for some people.

^ there’s a million ways… ultimately, you got to go with whatever works best

Once they hit 18ths old place in a darkened room for another 18mths, then on 3rd birthday release back into the wider community.

The only practical benefit of child-rearing books is something to pass the time while you’re waiting for your child to grow out of whatever unpleasant phase they’re in.