The Compromise

It is fascinating to me how much Kate understands yet how difficult it still is for her to communicate.  I am sure this is true for all two year olds, but this is our first two year old so we learn and discover together as she grows.  Luckily Kate is generally a sweet little girl and minds for the most part, however she has quite the independent streak and is getting bolder each passing day.  Discipline is a struggle and I have an ongoing internal debate as to whether I am too lax or too strict.  I feel like I let a lot of things slide as long as she is not in danger of hurting herself or someone else.  I choose to pick my battles, and the battles I do choose I stand my ground firmly.  It's taken a while for us to figure out what works.  We initially tried "timeouts" and still do them occasionally, but it doesn't quite seem effective when you ask her if she needs/wants to go to time out and she replies with a joyful "yes", then proceeds to skip over to timeout and plop down.  She hangs out for her two minutes, the timer dings, I reiterate why she was in timeout then she goes to play again. 9 times out of 10 it doesn't bother her one bit to be in timeout.  The other thing I've tried is a hand pop on the leg. I'm pretty sure Jason has never laid a hand on Kate but she has gotten more than one pop on the leg from me. Apparently I threaten to pop her on the leg frequently because one day I was trying to catch her to get her dressed so we could go run errands.  She was in a wild mood that particular day and decided to run circles around me as fast as she could telling me "NO" in various ways over and over...no, NO, Nooo, NOOOO, no, etc.  After hearing her tell me no about twenty times and getting dizzy from the circles I got down on my knee to be at eye level with her and stopped her.  I held her hands and looked her in the eye and said "Kate, you have to get dressed.  If you don't stop, Mommy's going to..." at which time she interrupted and shouted "POP YA LEG hehehehe" and then broke free and continued running around repeating "pop ya leg, pop ya leg".  I couldn't help from laughing out loud!  She caught me off guard....it was cute, unexpected and exactly what I was going to say!!  She's a mess :-)  Needless to say she did NOT get a pop on the leg that day, but she did get changed and we did go run errands.  The most effective forms of discipline communication we have discovered is compromise and choices! No brainer huh!? It is amazing.  Not only does it work, she understands and it is a win/win!  We also do a lot of "If/Then's".  These examples are just the first things that popped in my mind but we try to do it with everything.

An example of compromise:    Kate needs a bath but throws a fit to watch the Pets.  We say, "ok Kate, you can watch the pets but you have to take a bath first"  More times than not Kate says "Otay".  (Which is cute in its self....otay!) 

An example of choices:  We are walking around a store and she won't hold my hand.  I say "Kate, you have two choices.  You can hold mommy's hand OR mommy can carry you."  At which time she normally grabs my hand!  This is great because the two choices are both things I am fine with and she feels like she gets some say in what happens to her becuase she got to make a decision.

An example of If/Then:  We are eating dinner and Kate wants chips.  We say "If you eat all your ______ then you can have chips."  Most of the time she gobbles up whatever it is so she can have chips.

All I can say is that raising children I harder than I ever imagined, each day is a learning experience and I wouldn't change one single thing about it!