Читать книгу The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten - Martha Sears - Страница 53

Your one-year-old is toddling toward the lamp cord. Instead of scooping him up and risking a protest tantrum, first get his attention by calling his name or some other cue word that you have learned will stop him in his tracks long enough to distract him pleasantly. Then, quickly divert him toward a safer alternative. For example, when Lauren was younger (and it still works now sometimes), as soon as she would head for mischief we’d call out “Lauren!” Hearing her name took her by surprise and caused her to momentarily forget her objective. She’d respond “Yeah?” Once we had her attention, we’d quickly redirect her interests before she’d invested a lot of emotional energy into her original plan.

“Go” to sixteen-month-old Matthew he would get the baby sling and run to the door. We used this ability to associate for distraction discipline: When we saw Matthew headed for major mischief we’d say, “Go.” This cue was enough to motivate his mind and body to change direction. We filed away a list of cue words to use as “redirectors” (“ball”, “cat”, “go”, and so on). Of course, you must carry through and go for a walk or play ball or find the cat; otherwise your child will come to distrust you and you will lose a useful discipline tool. Toddlers from fourteen to eighteen months need lots of energetic catering to. Past eighteen months you can start saying things like “Not now. Maybe later.” (See other discussions of redirectors and here.)

Our strong-willed Lauren, at seventeen months of age, was stubbornly bent on going into the next room and finding her mother, who was trying to write. As I put out my arm to stop her she angrily pushed it away and began to throw a tantrum. I conveyed to her that she must stay with me, but I decided to make a game of it. Instead of physically restraining her, I let her play with my arm while using it to keep her from getting by. This turned into a “Give Me Five” game; and then, as she used her hand to push my arm away, I would take her hand and show her how to stroke my whiskers and she would laugh about it. Soon Lauren forgot her strong desire to go into the other room, deciding it was fun to stay and play with daddy. It took time and extra effort to distract Lauren, but it saved a lot of wear and tear on both of us. Instead of getting into an unpleasant father-daughter power struggle, I was able actually to improve our relationship. The stronger the will of the child, the more creatively a parent has to work at steering the child into good behaviour.

Distract and substitute.

Set limits. Much of your discipline depends upon your ability to set limits. Humans need limits, and the younger the human the more defined should be the limits. Boundaries provide security for the child whose adventurous spirit leads him to explore but whose inexperience may lead him astray. Consider the classic experiment: After a school playground fence was removed, the children, who previously roamed free all over the playground, huddled toward the centre of the grounds, reluctant to explore the formerly fenced-in corners. Limits do not really restrict a child but rather protect the curious explorer and his environment, freeing him up to function better within those confines. For example, your toddler doesn’t want to hold your hand as you cross a street or parking lot together. You firmly set a limit: street or car park crossing is only done while holding hands. There is no option. We worked hard to achieve the right balance between freedom and constraints for our toddlers. It was not easy. We wanted them to learn about their environment and about themselves, but not at the expense of harming themselves or others. They liked having rules and knowing how to apply them. When a rule needed applying they would often recite the rule to us just to hear it and see if it still applied.

Limit setting teaches a valuable lesson for life: The world is full of “yeses” and “nos”. You decide what behaviour you cannot allow and stick to that limit. This will be different for every family and every stage of development. Setting limits introduces a new level of frustration, which every child must experience at home before he is hit with it in the world outside the door. You decide you don’t want your toddler to throw rubbish around, so you keep the lid on or the door closed. You keep the door to the utility room closed because you don’t want the shelves mindlessly emptied. You make him stop pulling the dog’s fur and teach him to pat nicely. Scissors and sharp knives are off-limits. You learn to keep them out of reach, and you firmly “distract and substitute” when the inevitable happens. Setting limits helps the whole family. The toddler needs to learn how to share the house with the whole family, and parents need to be realistic about their tolerances. As one mother put it, “I know my child’s limits – and mine.”

Some parents fail to set limits because they can’t stand to see their baby frustrated. Healthy doses of frustration help a baby have just the right amount of resistance to keep him reaching for his full potential. No frustration, no growth. All frustration, no life. Be sure you model the healthy way to handle frustration. Adults have limits, too. If you know how to deal with your limits, you’ll know how to provide limits for your baby. Attachment parenting doesn’t imply you won’t have parent-child conflicts, yet it prepares you to better handle them.

Toddlers want someone to set limits. Without limits the world is too scary for them. They intuitively know they need the security that limits bring. When they test the limits they are asking you to show them how dependable you and your limits are.

Take charge. As each of our babies graduated into toddlerhood, we had to examine our roles as authority figures – what that meant and how we would maintain that status. We wanted to be clearly in charge of our toddlers so that they would feel safe and secure with someone standing between them and the dangers of the big world, with a place to go for help. We didn’t want to control them like puppets so that we ourselves could feel powerful. And contrary to the opinion of some theorists, we did not believe that our toddlers wanted to control us. It was themselves that they wanted to learn to control. We helped them in two ways: by letting them know by our tone of voice and our actions that we are mature adults, and by being available as a safe and secure home base that they could leave and return to at will, exploring the world then returning for comfort and reassurance when needed. In this way we could help them develop their own inner controls.