Dreamer_D
Super_Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2007
- Messages
- 25,533
Hunter is now 21 months and he is in the thick of the "fun times" for sure! He talks up a storm, has many two word "sentences" and said his first three-word sentence this week -- "I see you!" when playing peekaboo. And he started not wanting to go to sleep at night 
We had to use CIO again if you can imagine. Worked though thank goodness.
We have been basically following a lot of what TGal mentioned in her post. He is not quite ready for choices, but I still offer them sometimes. And we pick our battles because if we say "No" to something then we force ourselves to follow through no matter how annoying the consequence. A couple times I have been sorry that I set a limit or a rule because then I had to follow through but we are making ourselves do it.
We have not used a time out yet, as so far our methods below seem to work pretty well:
1) Always get down to his level and make eye contact when I am speaking to him about a "no" or a rule
2) Never ever give him what he wants when he screams and whines and tantrums. We make him ask using his words if it is something acceptable to have. If he wants something he cannot have, we just let him writh around and cry and try not to really bug him much while he does it.
3) Avoid positive reinforcement for any bad behaviour at all costs. We help each other see when we might inadvertently be doing this one.
4) His sleep times are sacred and he always goes to bed at the same time and napes in his bed at the same time, no matter what (except ewhen travelling and it is harder). Sleep = more manageable kiddo.
Sometimes the tantrum thing can be complicated when he will transition from tantrum to trying to calm down, and when he is in the latter stage sometimes he likes to come have a hug to help him calm down. So far we are trying to make him come semi-calmly away from his tantrum before giving him that hug, and we will talk about something else as we hug him or do some other activity while we hug him, but I am not totally sure on this one... we don't want the hugs to be a reward for a tantrum, but on the other hand learning emotional regulation is hard and if he needs a little physical contact to accomplish it, is that bad? Not sure...
We had to use CIO again if you can imagine. Worked though thank goodness.We have been basically following a lot of what TGal mentioned in her post. He is not quite ready for choices, but I still offer them sometimes. And we pick our battles because if we say "No" to something then we force ourselves to follow through no matter how annoying the consequence. A couple times I have been sorry that I set a limit or a rule because then I had to follow through
but we are making ourselves do it. We have not used a time out yet, as so far our methods below seem to work pretty well:
1) Always get down to his level and make eye contact when I am speaking to him about a "no" or a rule
2) Never ever give him what he wants when he screams and whines and tantrums. We make him ask using his words if it is something acceptable to have. If he wants something he cannot have, we just let him writh around and cry and try not to really bug him much while he does it.
3) Avoid positive reinforcement for any bad behaviour at all costs. We help each other see when we might inadvertently be doing this one.
4) His sleep times are sacred and he always goes to bed at the same time and napes in his bed at the same time, no matter what (except ewhen travelling and it is harder). Sleep = more manageable kiddo.
Sometimes the tantrum thing can be complicated when he will transition from tantrum to trying to calm down, and when he is in the latter stage sometimes he likes to come have a hug to help him calm down. So far we are trying to make him come semi-calmly away from his tantrum before giving him that hug, and we will talk about something else as we hug him or do some other activity while we hug him, but I am not totally sure on this one... we don't want the hugs to be a reward for a tantrum, but on the other hand learning emotional regulation is hard and if he needs a little physical contact to accomplish it, is that bad? Not sure...
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