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5 Tricks to Make Your Headstrong Toddler Listen to You

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The day the toddler learns that she is a person in her own right, all hell breaks loose. Before you know it, the little gurgling cherub has turned into a small yet very determined adversary. If you say potatoes, she will say tomatoes. And will eat neither.

There are a ton of books that offer advice on how to discipline a headstrong toddler. Many urge you to explain and get the child to understand their own behaviour. To be honest, I have tried the whole explain, rationalise, communicate business with full grown adults with little success, let alone making it work with a toddler who is holding on to the see-saw with a deathly grip, while it starts to pour.

So I dug up some books and scoured the internet for articles. Then I tried the theories out in my test-kitchen, a.k.a home. These are some of the things that work. Well, at least some of the times!

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1. Look before you Leap

  The next time you want to say something to the toddler (or even slightly older kid), bend down to their level or sit next to them. The daddy of all parenting experts, Dr. Sears recommends that you “engage your child in eye-to-eye contact”. This advice should however be taken with a pinch of salt. So no holding them by the jaw, turning their face towards you and saying “ Look at me when I talk”. That’s just unpleasant and rude and all experts agree that toddlers deserve respect just like you and I. The thing with kids (and sometimes adults) is that the more your demand, the less you get.

So instead of trying to grab attention, sit down, take a deep breath, look for a pause in what they are doing, then swift as an arrow, deliver instructions. This works well with succinct directions, which brings us to the next point.

2. KISS (Keep. It. Simple. Stupid)

   Its not that their attention span is decreasing, its just that there are far too many interesting things around them and you, sad to say, are eh not so exciting anymore! So if you are serious about getting heard, state your need simply and clearly and know when to stop.

So this may be true-

“Bobby, I want you to go wash your hands  because your hands are filthy and your dad and I really want to sit down to eat because we’ve had a long day and you need to watch less TV and you never listen to me when I say things to you blah blah blah”

It isn’t going to get you far. All that the kid heard was “blah blahpitty blah blah”.

Try this instead-

“Bobby, go wash your hands. We’re going to eat.”

Then sit down at the dinner table and start eating.

Harvey Karp, who wrote that brilliant book, “ The Happiest Toddler on the Block” serves up a simple trick. He says to give directions to your child like you would to a cashier at a fast food restaurant. “One big mac with no cheese and extra fries” . Cut out the fluff, keep only the essentials.

 

3.  Ifs and Buts are Better than No.

To win him over, acknowledge the kid’s needs and desires before you state yours. Then take it one step forward and offer a distraction or an alternative.

So say she wants to play in the park some more and you want to head home. Usually you’d keep repeating yourself, your volume getting higher and higher,while she just continues to ignore you. Happened a thousand times, right?

Try saying this -

“I know you want to play in the park. Park is fun, but if we say bye bye to the park now, we can go home and give duckie a bath.”

 

Sentence breakdown-

“I know you want to play in the park. Park is fun.”- Acknowledgement

“but if we say bye bye to the park now”- What you really want them to do

“we can go home and give duckie a bath”- positive trade-off and distraction

 

The only thing one has to be careful about is to not confuse the above with bribing, which again brings us to the next point.

 

4. Bribes and Threats are for henchmen

You can debate the virtues of bribing kids (and The New York Times did just that!) but most experts believe that bribes aren’t the best motivation tool.

Once a kid gets used to the idea that he can extort a candy, an extra hour of TV time or a new toy in return for doing everyday things, he or she won’t do anything for free. Their little powerful, and devious,minds will ensure you give them something in return for every crumb of good behaviour they throw your way. And its one of those things that snowballs over time into more complicated psychological issues you don’t want to have to deal with. The kid has to learn that he needs to take a bath, eat his food, drink his milk and go to bed because those are essential to his growing up into functional human being. Mommy learned it, daddy did and now he’s got to learn it too.

The other often used and rarely useful trick is threat. Threats work if and only if you are willing to act on them, otherwise it takes only a few times for the kid to figure out that you’re all smoke, no fire. And once they figure that out, all your good parenting intentions are toast.

5. Smile and Say Yes!

As is sometimes the case, the best advice comes from close quarters. In our case it was the kid’s grandmother. Seeing me battle it out over a pair of leggings with my two year old (ridiculous, I know!), my mother took me aside and sat me down. Looking squarely in my eyes she said,

“I know toddlers can be frustrating. Who said raising a child is easy? But if you are careful about your own behaviour, you’ll see it will become easier for both of you.”

 

(Do you see what happened here?! My mom was using the very trick on me that I had learned to use on my toddler…learned from books! She sat me down, looked me in the eyes…all of that stuff. Bamm!)

Anyways, she did have more to say and here’s what it was- When the child asks you for something, smile and say “Yes” as often as you can. It wouldn’t hurt her to wear leggings in a heat wave. She’s human and humans learn from their mistakes. She’ll get hot and take them off soon enough. There’s no harm in letting the child stay in the bathtub for a few more minutes, it wouldn’t be a disaster if she ate a slice of cake for breakfast one day, or wore tracks pants with a party dress or worse her nightdress with sparkly shoes, to the playground. In the larger scheme of things, none of it matters.

As long as something is not a major health or safety risk, learn to let it go! Let them win!

And then when the child does something that you know you just can’t allow for reasons of safety or your own sanity, say a firm and calm, No.

Once you’ve said No, don’t let anything, no amount of begging or pleading or crying or emotional blackmail or sprawling on the floor change your mind. Don’t ever budge from your stand because if you do, the little smarty pants would know she has the power to spin you on her pinky.

So there you have it. A quick run-through of  some tried, tested and Merry Mom certified tips for toddler maintenance ;) Give these ideas a spin and tell me if they worked for you!

The post 5 Tricks to Make Your Headstrong Toddler Listen to You appeared first on Mother Merry.


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