I just called Sarah, asking for a strategy.
I explained to her that my tiny terrorist kept asking me to play with him, and despite the need to get a bunch of laundry folded and put away, I actually decided to play instead. I don’t do this often.
I went upstairs to play with our “magnets” with him, and we were building cool things. Every time I would build something neat, he would knock it down, gleefully, but he would never let me knock his down. I asked him not to several times, telling him that it made me sad when he knocked down my cool stuff. He continued to smash my magnets. Eventually, I got up and walked away, telling him that I didn’t want to play with someone who would keep breaking my toys.
I came downstairs and sat on the couch and realized that I was REALLY hurt that he was being so unkind to me while I was playing with him. I took it REALLY personally. So I called the Toddler Whisperer.
Sarah is right on top of it. I told her what happened, and we talked a little bit about what to do in the future. She told me that as soon as he starts breaking down my (or someone else’s) magnets, he should be ‘interrupted’ – removed from the situation. I can choose to sit with him or leave him while he is understandably upset that he has been removed from playing, but once he is calm, I am to explain that it is not okay for him to break MY magnets. I shall tell him that he is free to crash his own as much as he likes, but only his own. He would then be allowed to play with the magnets again, so long as he followed those instructions. If he were to crash my (or anothers) magnets again, the magnets would be put away.
“It looks like you can’t play nicely with the magnets. We will have to put them away. We can try again tomorrow.”
There will likely be another period of upset while he protests that his magnets have been taken away, but sticking to the consequence is paramount.
It was then that Sarah dropped this parenting DIAMOND of advice upon me.
She said:
“Children are like little scientists. They are doing experiments to see what kinds of reactions they will get.”
(This, I was familiar with.)
“The thing is, every time they get a DIFFERENT reaction, it gives them more data to work with, which increases the length of the experiment. The more consistent you can be with your reactions, the less data they are given, the quicker they will move on.”
Mind = blown.
I mean, really, I knew that you want to be consistent, and I knew that you need to have firm boundaries. But the whole idea of making sure that you are giving them the same results every time? So that the experiment can be concluded and they can put that one to rest? I hadn’t heard it phrased in those terms before. It makes perfect sense.
So there you have it. I will be putting this into effect immediately, and see how quickly we can get some of these challenging behaviors to extinguish themselves.
Perhaps it would be helpful for mama to rearrange her thinking of Ryder as a “tiny Scientist” instead of a “tiny terrorist.”
