As Lucy has become increasingly more mobile, verbal, and willful, I’ve discovered that we are amassing quite a collection of household rules. Some are more obvious — and some are stranger — than others.
p{color:gray}. Photo: “Squirt the belly!” Yes, you may squirt water on Rosie’s belly during her bath, but not in her face.
I hate to feel like I’m saying “no” almost constantly, but I think this just comes with the territory when raising a curious toddler.
*Mealtimes*
* No spitting water out of your mouth at the table.
* No feet on the table.
* Big-girl cups must be held with both hands.
* There is no dipping of spoons, hands, or chicken drummettes into the big-girl cup.
* You must sit on the booster seat during mealtimes, but grown-up chairs are okay for snack time.
* No M&Ms, Joe-Joes, or ice-cream sandwiches at breakfast.
* No squishing the string cheese into an unrecognizable ball.
* No drinking the ketchup, soy sauce, or salad dressing.
* Last but not least (a rule one might think would be unnecessary): No gagging yourself with your hand.
*Household*
* No shoes on the futon.
* Toddlers may not sit in the bouncy seat, lest they break it.
* You must wear shoes on the back deck (to prevent splinters).
* You may not go down the scary outside basement stairs. (Papa’s note: They’re not scary!)
* No touching the computer screen.
* No touching Mama’s laptop keyboard.
* No playing with the real cordless phone.
* You may draw only on paper.
* No climbing on tables or countertops.
* Be gentle with the plants — no pulling off leaves or flowers.
* You may look at, but not touch, the “Lucy Boat.”
* No taking off the cap of the lip balm.
* No playing with the cordless mouse.
*Family Life*
* No hitting your sister.
* No bouncing her vigorously in the bouncy seat.
* Say “yes, please” instead of “yeah.”
*Bath & Body*
* A pee in the potty earns one jelly bean; a poop earns two jelly beans. Dry pants get a bonus jelly bean.
* You must wash your hands before collecting your jelly bean(s).
* No drinking the bathwater.
* You must get completely dried off after bathtime before streaking naked throughout the house.
* Do not stick anything in your ears, nose, or eyes.
*Travel*
* No standing up in the grocery cart. You may sit or kneel in the seat.
* You must buckle up in the car. Why? For safety.
* You may buckle the top part of the car seat buckle, but a grown-up must buckle the more challenging bottom latch.
* Hold hands with a grown-up when you cross the street.
* No touching the wheels while riding in the stroller.
* When an adult says, “Stop!”, you must stop, not run away laughing hysterically. (We still don’t quite understand this, and it is making Mama a bit nervous.)
With any luck, Lucy will remember all the fun things we do allow these days — and not all of the prohibitions!
I laughed aloud at the “you must dry completely before streaking…” rule, we have the same one.
Ann: You occasionally hit a note of biblical command here, and it reminds me of the classic essay by Ian Frazier, “"Lamentations of the Father"”:http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199702/lamentations-father (which is often passed around via email without attribution, alas). He starts like this:
bq. Of the beasts of the field, and of the fishes of the sea, and of all foods that are acceptable in my sight you may eat, but not in the living room.
And it just gets funnier from there.
No drinking the bathwater.
You must get completely dried off after bathtime before streaking naked throughout the house
There is no dipping of spoons, hands, or chicken drummettes into the big-girl cup.
Wow sounds alot like our house! We deal with all of the above. At least the streaking while wet has it’s own punishment built in. Mo always tries it and always falls, and I always tell him to wait to be dried off. Maybe someday ALWAYS will work?
I must say the highlight of my day is watching my 2 year old run “butt-naked” down the hall with a loud screech of excitment! I am releaved to see you have many of the same “issues/rules” as we do.
Boy, I can’t believe you are such a fuddy-duddy about the gagging one’s self with a hand. Ease up!
Jon & Ann,
Any tips for disciplining a 14 mos. old? E’s just started sharing his “will” with us loud and clear these last several weeks. There are certainly situations where he is testing us and exerting power with things he knows he’s not supposed to do [like throwing his food on the floor during mealtimes]. Because he doesn’t understand “time out” yet, punishment and consequences are hard to enforce. Did you experience this with Lucy early on in her toddlerhood? So far, I’ve taken the food away from him before it makes it to the floor in order to save it for “left-overs” (I hate wasting food) and he doesn’t get it back. We tried “all done” and immediately getting him out of the highchair after a food piece hits the floor. But we’ve found that he now communicates when he’s done eating by throwing food on the floor. Obviously, that’s not the message we were trying to get across. Any thoughts for us or reading material? Thanks, friends!
Kelli, that’s a challenging situation! Let us think on it for a bit and we’ll try to write up some ideas. Don’t think we forgot about your question!
We have many of these issues too! The carseat has been a crucible between Abby and me. “Abby self!” is her battle-cry. She enjoys getting into it herself but has the in-my-own-time toddler mentality about it. We also have compromised and let her buckle the top while we buckle the bottom.
Ohhh the toddler time issue “KILLS ME”. I run all the time so slowing down for her to “do it myself” kills me.
Kelli,
for us we would show “the face”, you know the mommy face of “I can’t believe my baby is doing that and if he doesn’t stop he might just meet the wrath of God or worst, the wrath of mommy” and would say something to the fact of “Please don’t do that, it makes me upset”. We would repeat a few times and then take her away from the situation. Sometimes if it was totally not working we would let her know her hand would get spanked and would not spank it hard, but enough that it surprised her. Although we really, REALLY use hand spanking as a very last resort as they will turn around and use it their self. NOT GOOD. But soon this phase will past and you won’t remember it because he will understand the time out. If I were to go back in time we would have used the timeout sooner. I think if you set a timer and have them set there until it beeps (reseting it if they get out of time out before time is over) they really do start to get it. When time is up we tell her why she was in the time out (now that she is two we ask her first to explain why she is there).
Just yeasterday I was cleaning and kind-of watching “Jon and Kate plus 8” on TLC and the toddlers got time out. My two year old came running up to me and said, “mommy they get time out too…they were naughty!” It was funny to she her totally understand that it is a universal punishment.
Good luck.
It’s starting to come back to me….
Kelli, I think we tried time-outs when Lucy was 14-15 months old, and I just felt like she didn’t really get them. So, to stop the food throwing, I would often just try to grab her hand before she threw it, or take her tray away. But, like Katrina said, this stage passed pretty quickly so you won’t have to worry about it for very long! soon Eli will move on to other adventurous quirks, or will learn more language skills, or both. :)
I agree with Ann that at the time we weren’t sure that the timeouts worked, but I think they did. First of all, she doesn’t throw food anymore (and that’s the idea, right?). Secondly, after several months of not having had a timeout, she recently did something naughty (I forget what) and when we were reprimanding her, she blurted out, “Timeout! Lucy have a timeout!” I wouldn’t have guessed she would remember that, but she obviously did. I’d say the gentle timeout might have more power than it seems.
We started timeouts in earnest with Benjamin when he was 16 months old. Since I had a newborn at the time, we put him in a pack n’ play for 1 minute for the timeout. It seemed to work pretty well. If the behavior he was put in timeout for was something like throwing a toy, I would hide the toy while he was in timeout just to help prevent him from doing it again after timeout.
I actually never really did much with either or my kids about throwing of food. If they were going to dump their whole plate or something like that, I would intervene, but the occasional dropped/tossed morsel I just ignored. Our dogs would generally get it anyway and it never became a major issue. I just didn’t have time to deal with it because at the age it began with Benjamin, Ella was a newborn and I was too busy with her and was honestly just happy he was eating…
Simply delightful to read about all of these issues/concerns/ideas from so many of your friends. What a grand roundtable you have developed here! Of course, OUR Jim and Jon never did any of these things that cause concern today. They were little darlings and Betty and I were simply passengers on the ship of life. Oh yes, I send you my love…