Where I’ve been, coffee doesn’t even make a dent. Staying home with Ruby has taught me that:
(1) A toddler’s yell is indeed many times greater than a baby’s yell. Ever more so when it is within the confines of a car with all the windows up.
(2) You can never get enough of veggie booty, pickles, or hamburgers.
(3) Once you go Cupcake Frosting, you never go back.
(4) There are many ways to say “umbrella” and “raining” but none are as cute as “um-burger” and “aining”.
(5) I must have thrown a lot of food on the ground as a toddler because Karma’s a bitch.
(6) You know you’ve got your priorities right as a parent when your 20-month-old can identify, and say, beer and coffee.
(7) Ruby may not know chicken from pork, but gosh darn it, she can tell when you’ve watered down her apple juice.
(8) Don’t use baby words because they are paying attention. All the time. Until she figures it out, Ruby is going to think she has toesies, and those are doggies and horsies over there.
(9) There are ways to say “No” that don’t involve the word at all.
(10) I can drink a lot of coffee.
Saying no without actually using the word no is Advanced Parenting! What tricks do you have up your sleeve? Share, because I’m always looking for new ways to say no without using the word. otherwise, the activity just becomes waaaaay too interesting.
here: i’ll start the sharing session: here’s one that i inherited from my mom: “that’s a choice for you to make when you are an adult. mom and dad’s choice is X. and when you are an adult, you can do Y all you want.” surprisingly, when this is said in a truly nice voice it somehow comes across as deferring rather than denying an item.
at 3, jake would go all misty-eyed and quiet while day-dreaming about all the toy guns he would own when he became a big boy.
Please write a handbook. Thanks!
Hazy: I would love to! HAHA!
Nikki: Interesting you ask that. I was actually referring to the Rubes
But yes, I guess we should have ways to say “No” too. One thing I learned from a friend is to keep the choices simple. I agree, at this age. When I give her too many options, ie. THREE OPTIONS, her mind explodes.
So I give her two, both of which are acceptable to me, and not whatever she wanted to do in the first place. I think this works until she catches on that it’s Hobson’s choice.
oh yeah — the two choice thing is a good one. i picked that up from a friend, too. i still use it as a starting point with my kids. as they get older, they come up with questions about why those two options and then they are able to suggest alternatives that are acceptable to me and make them happy, too. but i still find, for me anyway, that it’s helpful to create parameters for the conversation about the choice and two options still seems to be about right.
It’s still two choices at that age? I used to think when they hit five, perhaps they could handle three
It’s amazing to see her brain totally implode when I say anything more than two concepts at this point…
Classic! Laughed so much when I read this particularly the bit about watering down her apple juice.