I found that rephrasing the request back at the child works wonders:
“Gimme a drink”
“Oh, I think you mean ‘Please may I have a drink’”
“Yeah, please may I have a drink”
Depending on the age (this worked with my kids as early at 2-3. Rather than making s/he remember the right words I’m doing the prompting until they learn the “script”. By keeping it relaxed they learned it quickly, rather than digging their heels in.
Heh, the child in question is 2, a lot of these require the ability to reason with her a little more than she is ready for. Sometimes she surprises us with her ability to reason. Like afterward when Mommy woke up I asked her if she was annoying and she said, “No, not annoying.”
Sometimes I explain something to her and she says, “Oh.”, with a very thoughtful look on her face, and then othertimes she seems completely uncomprehending. But that happens with a lot of things, like she has gone through her entire alphabet, she has pointed out every letter independently on her own, but yet sometimes she doesn’t know what an ‘L’ is. I think that’s one of the weirdest things, particularly when it manifests as being totally precocious and then we don’t see it out of her for a while. Kind of like how she would ask for Mommy when Mommy wasn’t there but couldn’t be cajoled into saying Mommy when Mommy WAS there when Mommy was her first word with a meaning besides an emotional expression, “Yay”. Now she can have semi-conversations but the holes in her ability to converse are kind of strange sometimes. I’ve never heard her say her full name though she says a diminutive of it.
Sometimes time-out is just a parental sanity-regaining device.
As in “Oi! Evil Screeching Squabbling Kids! You in that room. You in that room. Me in the living-room. Once everyone’s quiet and calm we can all come out of our corners and play nicely again, ok?”
My two year old tried the crying to get what he wants thing, and I’ve learned the best reaction to that is to simply ignore him while he’s screaming. He’ll scream his bloody head off for five minutes or so, and when he realizes I am refusing to even acknowledge his existence when he’s acting that way, he approaches me and says “daddy, done crying,” and then we work on solving whatever the problem was.
The first first thing kids have to learn is that yelling will not get them even the tiniest little smallest thing, not even simple acknowledgment. Kids are smart enough to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
That being said, sometimes kids just scream because they’re frustrated or angry or whatever. It’s not always about trying to get something. If my son is screaming like that, it’s not even possible to always figure out exactly what the problem is. We’re at a stage where he gets so upset because we can’t always understand everything he says, and when that happens it’s a friggin’ nightmare. But you can’t really punish a kid for being frustrated, right? I haven’t figured out how to handle that yet…
My how times changed. If my mum or dad took a nap, I’d be too happy that they were busy sleeping so I could see what kind of stuff I could do and not have them notice me.
I’m terrified of having a toddler. Which sucks because it’s bearing down on me like a freight train seeing as I have a 4-month old at the moment.
Diversion tactics always worked for me. Something that would encourage quiet thinky activities. Coloring or making homemade playdough or something.
Good Lord, have you people never heard of Nyquil?
Hey, all right, we made it to post #28 before the inevitable “just drug the kid!” post was made! This board is just full of surprises sometimes.
I think in every case it’s a combo of, ‘You’re not doing what I want, I am frustrated because you don’t understand me.’, sometimes I tell her straight up I don’t understand what she wants and that’s very frustrating for her. I tell her she needs to use her words trying to teach her what the utility of words are for.
At this age, pretty much any punishment is punishing them for being frustrated. Or more specifically punishing them for responding inappropriately to frustration. I think the key to a timeout is letting them know that there is a rational way out of their problems, one that doesn’t involve screaming your head off. She gets very excited and throws her hands up with glee shouting, “I did it.”, when she is able to problem solve. I make her do a lot of things herself, things that maybe other parents wouldn’t make the kid do, but I think overall it’s good for her. Like when she has an accident and pees on the floor I make her clean it up. She’s pretty good about it too. She doesn’t do a good job, but at this age it’s the thought that counts and she’s more than happy to do it.
Haaa!
It sounds like a timeout or some disciplinary action was appropriate if she was already screaming. I mean, if it was just low-grade whining, I can see a distraction working, but if you’ve gone past The Point of No Return and shrieking has ensued, a timeout seems the way to go. Just my two cents, though.