Toddler parenting

This is per request from a discussion with friends on Facebook, and I started writing my answer in the Facebook reply box, but realized it was going to take too long and would be much easier to read in this format. So here it is--you know who you are--but hopefully it can be helpful to others as well.

All kids are different, and that means every tactic and idea will be helpful for some kids, and completely ineffective for others. That's pretty much true across the board. Even if it works for most kids, there will always be some for whom it just doesn't. And the reverse is true as well--even if something is horrible/outdated/ridiculous/etc, there's some kid out there for whom that is the magic button. As always, so much of parenting is just figuring out who your kid is, who you are, who the rest of your family is, and how that all meshes together. Personalities are different, values are different, and situations are different.

For some reason or other, I've been frustrated with most of the advice given for parenting toddlers, either on a basic philosophical level or because it simply hasn't worked with my kids. And while I get that kids are different (and Peregrine in particular has some distinctive quirks when it comes to discipline and learning), I've watched and taught a lot of kids, and most toddler-parenting advice I read simply doesn't resonate with my experience. Maybe some of it is where you're coming from--people approach parenting with a hugely diverse set of paradigms and take and utilize advice (or not!) in hugely diverse ways. Maybe it's just me. But for whatever reason, I haven't connected with much of what I see available, whether it's the article in Parents magazine in the waiting room, the 20 articles that come up when I google "toddler parenting tips," or the advice given (and liked) by dozens of women in my local moms' Facebook group.

So, for better and worse, here's what hasn't worked for me, and what has worked instead. Take it for what it's worth--one person's experience, but with a decent handful of kids--and as another set of tools that may be slightly harder to come by than what's generally available.

1.) What hasn't worked: An assumption that toddlers have no impulse control and therefore can't learn self-control. I've read--and heard--so much that basically dismisses any effort to teach a toddler to resist temptation. I've read so much that says toddlers can't learn to (stay away from the dog bowl, leave Grandma's sewing machine alone, stand by Mom in the parking lot, etc). And it's backed up with a lot of research about undeveloped brains and anecdotal stories about discipline simply "not working" for kids that young. Usually what's recommended is simple prevention, restraint, or redirection. Put the dog bowl away. Wear the toddler. Offer an alternative activity. I always read this and think, sure, that's an easy fix and it does no harm...but, if you're willing to put in some time, toddlers are incredibly capable of learning, and, with some patience and teaching, can resist temptation, even if it's right under their noses.

What has worked: Choosing a few small "battles" and teaching toddlers some very elementary skills in self-control and self-restraint. In the experience I've had with toddlers, I can say, very confidently, yes, toddlers can learn to stay away from the dog bowl, to stay seated in the cart, to see a phone on the table and not touch it. They can't always remember these things in your absence. They can't always generalize one rule to every situation (the dog bowl at your friend's house may look completely different and it won't register that they're not supposed to touch that one either). They are easily done in by hunger, tiredness, curiosity, toddler scatterbrain, and human orneriness. You can't expect them to be perfect, or angrily punish them if they test limits or forget something you've already taught them. Toddlers need lots (and lots and lots and lots and lots) of repetition to learn, and they learn by doing, not hearing. But--they can learn, and you can teach them. It has to be reasonable, and it has to be on a small scale. Toddlers do better in a home that's livable for them, and pleasantly explorable. But you can choose to leave the dog bowl on the ground, or keep a cabinet unlocked but off limits, or set your phone down and teach a child to leave it alone. Techniques vary by child, and you should be prepared for repetition, regression, and toddler testing (i.e. this is best not done with something dangerous, or something you care a lot about). Here's the technique that worked the best with my kids: Start by telling them "no" or "don't touch" (use a firm voice, but not scary or overly stern). If/when they do go ahead and touch it anyway, take their hands and hold them still next to the object they were not supposed to touch (again, firmly, but not painfully). Don't remove them from the situation, but also don't lecture or reiterate the no. Hold for a few seconds--long enough for them to feel slightly bored/restrained--and then let go. If/when they reach for it again, repeat, without comment, the hand-holding, but hold it for slightly longer.

I can't claim this technique (nicknamed "hand timeouts" by Andrew and me) would work for all kids since I've tried it on very few--but it worked amazingly with my kids. I don't think I ever had to repeat it more than three times in one go. It didn't work to the extent that I could leave a 2-year-old alone with a highly tempting object and trust it to be completely untouched when I reentered the room. But I could keep my kids from touching our friends' completely un-child-proofed TV set. I could keep them from pulling my hat off while riding on my back. I could have my phone out while waiting for a call and not have it snagged by a child. Most of all, I could teach my kids--at a very young age--that they were entirely capable of wanting something, being able to reach something, and choosing not to touch it. That is a huge gift to give a child, and it comes with an immense amount of dignity and freedom, both for yourself and for your little one. Children know when they are capable and when they are trusted, and they can--they absolutely can--begin to learn how, even when they are very small. It may not always be worth your while, or your time. Sometimes it's easier and better for everyone to just put the phone up on the counter. By all means, choose convenience if you need to. It's not like your toddler won't be able to learn self-control in other ways. But don't feel like you can't teach a little one, or like they have absolutely no impulse control at all. Impulse control is a muscle, if only a figurative one. It can be taught and stretched and grown, even in very tiny children.

2.) What hasn't worked: Distraction/Redirection. This seems to be the be-all, end-all of most toddler discipline advice, and for some reason, it quit working for both my kids around the age of 11 months. The idea is this: when you see your child doing something they shouldn't, you remove the object or remove them from the situation, and quickly offer a safe, acceptable alternative. (Whisk away the dinner knife and replace it with a spoon, scoop up kid and ball and move them both outside, take little hitting hands and place them on a drum, etc.) Supposedly, this causes the child to feel empathized with and validated, and have their original impulse honored in an acceptable way. Also, if you're operating under the assumption that toddlers can't learn self-control, this is a solution for all those times toddlers are touching things they shouldn't.

Except.

My kids caught on. Every. Single. Time. For some reason (intelligence? excessive orneriness? clueless singlemindedness? advanced development in the "undistractible" department?) my kids knew when I was trying to pull a bait-and-switch and would just casually bat my alternative aside and go back to the original. And I couldn't really blame them, or be mad at them, because an offered alternative isn't a directive, and they're fully within their rights to refuse it. Also, generalizing my kids' impulses never worked--when they wanted to hit me, for instance, they didn't just want to hit something, they wanted to hit me. They never felt validated by my offering an acceptable alternative, they just felt frustrated and angry.

What has worked: Direct communication, with occasional focused redirection. If I didn't want my kids to do/touch something, it always worked best to just tell them that, directly, and stop them doing it. It doesn't have to be done in a mean or threatening way. It doesn't even have to be the kind of long-drawn-out teaching moment mentioned above. It can be as simple as "no, don't touch that, please" while taking the knife/phone/stick away. Sometimes this resulted in tears and frustration, but honestly, usually it didn't. Toddlers are resilient, and run up against boundaries all the time. My kids did better overall, and seemed calmer and more able to roll with the punches, when I said what I meant and meant what I said without emotion or drama or an attempt to appease them.

That said, there are times when toddlers fixate and intentional, focused redirection helps them move on. When I say "focused," I mean there isn't a bait-and-switch involved, nor are you trying to lure them into a new activity by making it exciting. After stopping them from doing something, if they continued fixating on the forbidden activity, I would direct them to do something else, because sometimes, all they need is a different script. Usually I'd give them an open-ended choice of constructive activities (i.e. "Please find something kind to do with your hands" or "Would you like to help me with a kitchen job?"), and I typically didn't try to present it as being a better alternative to the old activity ("Look at this spoon! It's so much more fun than the knife because it scoops!"), just a better alternative to lying on the floor and screaming.

I also found this to be a more sustainable approach as my kids drifted from toddlerhood into older, even less distractible ages. Instead of having to come up with more elaborate and enticing reasons to do what I ask them to, I can just keep giving them straight answers, which they know to trust, because there's not a trick or a power struggle lurking behind them.

3.) What hasn't worked: Diffusing tantrums by discussing/explaining/validating feelings. This has never worked for me, with any child, any age, any tantrum. Maybe, maybe, with a much older child whose emotional outburst is truly the result of feeling ultimately ignored, invalidated, and misunderstood. But this simply isn't true of most toddler tantrums, and I've never found that trying to sort through a child's feelings or offer comfort during a tantrum has gotten me anything but a bigger, angrier tantrum. Kids either seem outraged that you're discussing the obvious ("What do you mean AM I FEELING ANGRY? DO I NOT LOOK ANGRY ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!?") or resisting your efforts to soothe them becomes a power struggle that they are pretty much destined to win, because you can't force someone to be comforted.

What has worked: Leaving tantrums alone, with the offer of comfort available when the tantrum is done. I could write a whole post on tantrums, because most toddler-tantrum advice I've read assumes all tantrums are created equal, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Tantrums are almost diverse as children themselves, and there truly is no one trick for diffusing, preventing, or managing them. But in general--in a huge sweeping broad general--leaving a tantrum alone communicates to children that you aren't afraid of them and you're not desperate for them to stop. Nothing invites a power struggle like the terrible combination of parental desperation and a child's already-bad mood. However, tantrums aren't exactly pleasant for children, and the only children I've known who seem to enjoy their own tantrums are (older) children who are used to using tantrums to manipulate adults and get what they want. Most kids--from tiny toddlers up to elementary-aged children--end their tantrums feeling bad. They might be embarrassed, they might feel guilty, they might be frustrated and worn out from putting so much effort into asking for something and not getting it, they might be overwhelmed by something outside their control, they might not know how to calm themselves down, they might be aware of a break in a happy relationship with you, they might simply be worn down by the physical stress of screaming and crying for a long time--but regardless, something's wrong and I've always found that an offer of comfort goes a long way. Not an offer of appeasement or a consolation prize, not a distraction or a treat, not an apology for the bad feelings or the boundary held, just simple comfort (usually I just say "do you want a hug?" or "do you want help calming down?" or something like that). Usually I would offer it as the tantrum is winding down (I have no problem with holding a sobbing child who isn't fighting me or trying to get something out of me, but I'm not going to prolong a power struggle or let a kid vent their anger on me). I suppose there's a sweet spot to be hit here, but honestly, I've never had this after-the-fact comfort be perceived as a reward, nor have I seen it encourage further tantrums. Not that it couldn't be, and I imagine this varies by child, but I think a lot of it is how you present it (there's a lot of difference between "I'm so sorry it has to be this way, you must feel so bad, let me try to make it better," and "hey, it's all right, I still love you, take a little calm from me and let's move on.")

4.) What hasn't worked: saying "yes" if at all possible and avoiding "no" like the plague.
There is a lot of material out there about avoiding the word "no" with babies and toddlers, and it comes from every angle. Some of those angles I find bizarre (apparently toddlers only hear the last word you say, so when you say "no climbing" they just hear "climbing" and keep blissfully climbing accordingly--what? I've never met a child who operates like that),  and some of them have some solid truth behind them (if you're constantly "no-no-no-ing" your child for everything, all the time, especially if you're just talking and not enforcing, those constant no's become background noise, which is a problem for when it really matters). But the prevailing train of thought behind a lot of the "be a yes mom" advice seems to be that "no" is a very hard word for children (who control so little) to hear, and that avoiding it as much as possible will smooth our days with our toddlers, help keep our relationships with our little ones positive, and make them much more likely to really listen when we do, on that very rare occasion, need to say no.

A lot of this is true, and a lot of it works, especially when it comes to kids' constant requests for things. Finding positive ways to deny or delay their requests is actually really effective, and sets a much more pleasant household/classroom/middle-of-WalMart mood. Kids are happier when they're told yes, and if that's what you mean, you might as well say it, even if it comes with ridiculous caveats (you have no idea how many utterly absurd requests from my children have been cheerfully and summarily answered with something equally utterly absurd like "why don't you ask me for that for your birthday when you're a teenager" or "sure, when you have a job.") But as for the claims that mostly saying yes will result in less tantrums, and that children who rarely hear no will respect it when they do--this doesn't ring true with my experience at all.

In fact, I've found the opposite to be true. Toddlers who never hear no don't know what to do with no when they hear it. Toddlers who are used to running up against boundaries that sway/negotiate/compromise/accommodate aren't going to suddenly respect a hard boundary that doesn't move. They're not going to instinctively know the difference between wanting to play the recorder at top volume and wanting to run and touch the police car driving down the road. A lot of the avoid-saying-no advice assures that if you say no rarely, your children will know you really mean it when you do, and it will be tolerable and understandable, because you usually say yes. But in my experience, when you never say no, or if you always negotiate/distract/redirect/compromise, a direct "no" is simply out of character, and children will deeply resent it because of its rareness. Children dislike the unfamiliar.

What works instead: saying no, on occasion, when it doesn't matter.
Here's what I've found: when children hear no, and no is enforced, they can practice responding to it appropriately. If you say no when it doesn't matter, you can practice enforcing no in a low-stress environment, without anyone's life or safety at stake. When you say no to something trivial, in your own home, that you maybe could have said yes to, your toddler can tantrum if she wants to and then get over it. You risk a toddler tantrum pretty much every time you say no to a toddler, and sometimes that battle isn't worth fighting, and that's okay. But sometimes it is, if only for this reason: practice makes perfect, and sometimes you both need practice. She needs practice hearing no and learning what it means, and you need practice hearing her get angry, or sad, or disappointed, over something you told her. The more you both have that practice, the more it will stop being a big deal. And the more you both can think of "no" as something that's not a big deal, the easier and simpler it will be to say it when you really need to. The children I know who respond to "no" best are the ones who are used to hearing it, the ones who are used to feeling a little bit disappointed and knowing that life will go on.

And while it doesn't happen overnight, the more you learn your toddler can be trusted with the word "no," the more freedom you're able to give her, and the more fun you can have together. You can say yes, a lot, because you know she can handle a no when it comes (and you know you can handle her response to a no if it's not ideal). Also, the more a toddler can learn, young, that no is not a big deal, usually, the more she'll carry that with her as she grows, when the no's aren't always coming from you.

...

So I hope that was helpful, if only to offer you a glimpse of my family (and classroom) and reassure you that it's okay to do things a bit differently from the books, the articles, the experts. Find what works. Experiment, and try, and grow, and learn. Study your kid and build a relationship with him, and gather the wisdom of the people around you. There's no such thing as a parenting formula, and these, for me, are the places in toddler parenting where the formula, as given, hasn't made sense. Take it for what you will and grab any tools that help!