[tmountain]

We have been redirecting our toddler pretty successfully in most “conflict” situations. Instead of telling him what he can’t do, give him a few options of things he can do. It’s not appropriate for all situations but a great strategy for drawing focus away from whatever is causing contention.

[bcrosby95]

As an aside, this worked for 2/3 of our children. For one of them if we gave them choices like that they would just scream back "NONE". We never really found what worked for her, usually we just let her cry it out a bit then offer a metaphorical olive branch (oftentimes our oldest would let her play with one of her toys, which tended to make her happy, but only if you let her be upset for a long enough period of time first... otherwise she would just reject/throw it).

Anyways, kids are people. Try different things.

[scruple]

One of our twins is this way, her sister will accept making a choice based on options we present and so will her younger brother. Bit of a tangent but, basically everything I ever I believed I understood about the nature vs. nurture argument have broken down completely in the face of raising (fraternal) twins.

[thaumasiotes]

> Bit of a tangent but, basically everything I ever I believed I understood about the nature vs. nurture argument have broken down completely in the face of raising (fraternal) twins.

I read something speculating that a major contributor to Americans' general disbelief that family members are usually very similar to one another is that most of their exposure to "family members" is actually to the members of fictional families on television who are played by unrelated actors.

(I know you're making an observation about how clear the differences between your children are. But I submit that if you compare them to a few unrelated children, you'll find that they are indeed very similar to each other overall.)

We have a lot of public pronouncements about what children, or people generally, are like, but almost all of it is completely uninformed by facts or experience.

[thaumasiotes]

> Anyways, kids are people. Try different things.

There's a really surprising amount of resistance to the idea that an effective way to work with one person might be counterproductive when working with a different person.

[shawndrost]

"THOSE ARE NOT MY CHOICES. THOSE ARE YOUR CHOICES."

[chambers]

^ This is the real advice. Approach a conflict as a choice the child needs to make, and the options the parents need to give. Be flexible but hard where it counts.

Children need grounding. "I need to win arguments with my own kids" is a vanity, that gives up a lot of the ground kids need for growing up.

[bornfreddy]

Actually, children don't need grounding, they need to be taken seriously instead. Their emotions are no less valid than the ones of the grown up people, they just lack experience to recognize them and to handle them appropriately.

If you take the time to explain the situation to the child you often don't need to convince them anymore. And if you can't explain - should you really have your way?

[kortilla]

>If you take the time to explain the situation to the child you often don't need to convince them anymore.

This is not true. It doesn’t work for meltdowns caused by not buying them a toy, not giving them ice cream at bed time, etc.

[bornfreddy]

No, it doesn't - because meltdowns are the final stage of "why is this adult not listening to my side of the story?!?'. What works is communicating with them (earlier), listening to them, talking to them and - yes, explaining situations to them. Basically treating them with respect. No offence, but whenever I saw a meltdown, the child in question always had a point. It was the adult who was missing it. What is worse, sometimes the adult was even plain wrong in their position, at least from my point of view.

I hope I don't come across as rude, this is just something I feel very strongly about. Once you see how differently the kids behave if you treat them with respect it is difficult to be quiet about it. :-)

[kortilla]

What you’re saying is out of touch with raising a child with a strong personality and you’re either projecting your experience with a docile child or are just really overfitting on a few bad interactions you observed that were clearly caused by the adult.

Not being understood is one of many frustrations children have and it’s very rarely the cause with my friends that diligently practiced gentle parenting that heavily involved acknowledging emotions and desires but still resulted in meltdowns because KIDS ARE SELFISH. There is a reason “sharing” is a school that has to be taught.

[bornfreddy]

Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe "strong personality" is just an excuse, or maybe it really is the cause.

I don't think we will reach an agreement here, so let's just leave it at this. Wish you all the best!

[wizzwizz4]

In urgent, dangerous situations (e.g. sudden busy traffic)? Yes. But, you can explain the existence of those situations ahead of time, and practice things like "get off the road" or "let go of that cooking pot".

[danaris]

...but if you haven't been doing this with your child up to now, and you suddenly start, it probably won't work right away.

A foundation of trust has to be built up, and that can take years, in some cases, especially if your child feels that you have a long pattern of not taking them seriously or caring about what they think or feel.

[Dyac]

I'd heard this advice plenty so felt ready to deploy it when I had a toddler.

I have a toddler now, and have tried this approach a number of times. She just says "no" to the choices....

[rawgabbit]

When my son was little, he would say things like “Yes means no and no means yes.” He would also say things like “milk is good, butter is made from milk, cake is made from butter, why can’t I have cake for breakfast?”

Through persistence and speaking to him calmly, he eventually stopped his petulance. Usually if he wanted something, we would only give in after repeated conversations. We wanted to explore decision making with him and ensure he would not quickly want something else. The main thing I wanted was for him to talk and explain why he wanted something so bad.

I believe he only threw a full tantrum a handful of times. When that happened we followed the advice of pretending to leave without him. When he realized we were not rewarding his tantrum, he stopped.

In short, we wanted to reward him for communicating not for throwing a tantrum.

[w10-1]

Imagine you woke up, learned that you have your own feelings and ideas and agency, and yet... you don't get to choose except what's between handed to you (the blue pill or the red pill). And you start to realize it keeps happening. Maybe that's what being 2-3 is like? To a toddler it will be eons before they get to make their own choices.

Yes, "no" can be petulant, but it's also could be deeply beautiful and true.

[murkt]

Yep, it works for majority of children, but not for all of them. Folks that had a couple of kids with whom it did work spread it as a gospel.

You can try many other things, and maybe you’ll find something that works some of the time.

“What do you want?” can be “NOTHING!”, can be something. “You want this, but the reality is this and that. How can we deal with that?”

If kid is upset it usually helps to validate their feelings first.

Also, my kids are not yours, so take this with the grain of salt as well.

[nemo44x]

Yeah very often it’s about feeling like they have some control. Consider their day to day they are constantly being told where to go and what to do. They’re still people and do want to feel like they have some agency. Of course we can’t let them choose to do whatever they want. But by giving them options they now feel like they’re included in the decision making process.

Not always appropriate but very useful in many situations. And if used proactively, possibly limit episode occurrence when not under your control.

[deadbabe]

That’s a good short term solution but long term you just screw your kid up.

There’s some things you simply cannot do, and nothing else can be done about it. You have to learn the lesson that sometimes you lose a conflict and that’s it. You don’t get anything else. Sucks? Yea welcome to life.

[tmountain]

It's a tool in the toolbox, not the only tool. Kids need to have some level of agency over their lives. They also need to know that there are some things you can't just do. Negation comprehension doesn't develop in most toddlers until roughly 27 months, so it's also a matter of what is age appropriate.

[jhrmnn]

The question is what is the right age to learn that lesson at.

[murkt]

Any age. There is no right age to jump out of the window on the 10th floor, no right age to cross a busy interstate by foot, no right age to set a bed on fire. You wouldn’t allow a kid to do it (and similar things) at any age. Would you? :)

[decimalenough]

This is known as the "red pants, blue pants" strategy, and it's employed in places like customer support as well. Basically, instead of telling your toddler "you have to wear pants!", you give them the option of choosing between red pants and blue pants.