Don't touch, stop, NO!
If I had a dollar for every time I said 'Don't touch', 'Stop', 'No'... I could afford to stay home long after E starts high school.
Honestly... I sound like a broken record, and I know its only going to get worse, as we have just started into this phase (which some parents will say lasts 18 years)!
E is fairly good at listening right now (I will probably groan when I read this in 6 months). You raise your voice the tiniest octave and he looks at you funny... thinks about what he is doing, and either tries it again while still looking at you or moves on without thinking twice about what he was just doing.
When we returned home from vacation, I couldn't help but notice how much he has changed in the last month. Before we left he was crawling but you could keep him confined to the living room. Now he is all over the house, touching everything he can get his hands on, and pulling himself up on every unstable piece of furniture we own. Long gone are the days where I could whip up a blog post while he was playing happily on the mat. Sometimes I think he sees me open my laptop and that cues him to 'go wild', make noise, do something he knows he shouldn't (I actually love this, because it cements the fact that my blood is running through his veins)!
You gotta love the parenting magazines that advise on 'letting them explore their new world of freedom'. The ones that tell you to refrain from saying 'No', 'Stop' and 'Don't' ... but honestly, there is a small vocabulary of synonyms for these words - (and I can just see E in kindergarten telling his friends 'never'', 'halt', 'thou-shall-not') - and let's face it, they all mean the same thing at the end of the day.
I made a tweet about this exact topic, and I did get a few responses... most notably from a reader (should out to Baby Mama Kristy Boyd) who said that she uses 'Away please' and 'No thank-you'... which is more polite and something I wouldn't mind hearing E tell others when he does start talking. I need to train to myself to not immediately react with the standard words... but I usually blurt out Emery No. Emery Stop. Don't touch Emery, and then try to revise my statement to 'Emery, please stop touching that, how bout we play with x instead' - of course my good mothering statements always come second!
I am sure I am not the first nor the last new mom to deal with this... does anyone out there have any good advice for running interference when your baby is doing things you don't want them to be doing?
Honestly... I sound like a broken record, and I know its only going to get worse, as we have just started into this phase (which some parents will say lasts 18 years)!
E is fairly good at listening right now (I will probably groan when I read this in 6 months). You raise your voice the tiniest octave and he looks at you funny... thinks about what he is doing, and either tries it again while still looking at you or moves on without thinking twice about what he was just doing.
When we returned home from vacation, I couldn't help but notice how much he has changed in the last month. Before we left he was crawling but you could keep him confined to the living room. Now he is all over the house, touching everything he can get his hands on, and pulling himself up on every unstable piece of furniture we own. Long gone are the days where I could whip up a blog post while he was playing happily on the mat. Sometimes I think he sees me open my laptop and that cues him to 'go wild', make noise, do something he knows he shouldn't (I actually love this, because it cements the fact that my blood is running through his veins)!
You gotta love the parenting magazines that advise on 'letting them explore their new world of freedom'. The ones that tell you to refrain from saying 'No', 'Stop' and 'Don't' ... but honestly, there is a small vocabulary of synonyms for these words - (and I can just see E in kindergarten telling his friends 'never'', 'halt', 'thou-shall-not') - and let's face it, they all mean the same thing at the end of the day.
I made a tweet about this exact topic, and I did get a few responses... most notably from a reader (should out to Baby Mama Kristy Boyd) who said that she uses 'Away please' and 'No thank-you'... which is more polite and something I wouldn't mind hearing E tell others when he does start talking. I need to train to myself to not immediately react with the standard words... but I usually blurt out Emery No. Emery Stop. Don't touch Emery, and then try to revise my statement to 'Emery, please stop touching that, how bout we play with x instead' - of course my good mothering statements always come second!
I am sure I am not the first nor the last new mom to deal with this... does anyone out there have any good advice for running interference when your baby is doing things you don't want them to be doing?
Labels: Emery, tales from new mommy school
posted by SC at 11:09 AM
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