Child-rearing advice: from the mouths of babes
One evening when my son was about four years old, he had stopped watching TV or otherwise amusing himself and had come into the kitchen to stand there for a moment while I stood at the stove, cooking dinner. He began whining about something; I don’t recall what it was.
I whipped around and told him to stop interrupting me and whining; I was cooking and it was annoying and he had to wait. He did it again. This time I raised my voice in exasperation, and added that when he’d been a little baby I’d read a child-rearing book that said that if you pick a child up whenever it cries, that child will become secure and happy and won’t be so demanding later on.
He’d been picked up when he cried as a baby, I said. So why was he bugging me so much now?
I certainly didn’t expect an answer from him; I was just annoyed. But I got one.
Picture an adorable little four-year-old who frowns a bit and then puts his hands on his hips. “Well, that’s the stupidist thing I ever heard!” he said. “You know that the more you give kids, the more they want.”
My son, at four. The child psychologist.
Wise beyond his years, wiser than that books author!
LOL. Too smart. Very bright kid. Hope he didn’t cause you too much trouble. 😉
My trick: if my kids were whining, I told them that I cannot hear a whiny voice. If they wanted to tell me something, it had to be in a regular voice.
Didn’t work immediately, but it did help. I’m sure most of us parents know: it’s all about consistency!
A boy gives a cookie to a mouse. The mouse asks for a glass of milk. He then requests a straw (to drink the milk), a mirror (to avoid a milk mustache), nail scissors (to trim his hair in the mirror), and a broom (to sweep up his hair trimmings). Next he wants to take a nap, have a story read to him, draw a picture, and hang the drawing on the refrigerator. Looking at the refrigerator makes him thirsty, so the mouse asks for a glass of milk. The circle is complete when he wants a cookie to go with it.
Book by Laura Numeroff
Hmmm Interesting, did he become a psychologist ?
Molly NH:
No, just when he was a four-year-old.
““You know that the more you give kids, the more they want.””
Peak wisdom. Probably all down hill for that kid since then. Probably got all wrapped up in “being smart.”
Mrs. Firefly has worked with handicapped infants for many years and her medical training in College included a lot of psychology, including child and infant psychology. When we started having kids I basically just did what she told me to do (never bad advice for a husband, but in our case I knew she was w-a-a-a-a-y) more knowledgeable on the subject than I. Most of what she told me seemed rather obvious once I gave it a moment’s thought, but none of it had occurred to me until she explained.
Our basic rules correlate with neo and son of neo’s conversation. Give attention for good behavior and ignore bad behavior. Assuming the young child isn’t injured, or doing harm to herself or others; ignore whining, crying, tantrums, hitting, biting, etc. And when she does something good give her praise commensurate with the act, or, even better, give her some of your time. The theory is; kids basically crave attention. If they learn they get more of it when misbehaving, don’t be surprised when they misbehave more.
When our oldest was very young (weeks?), Mrs. Firefly told me, “When you’re carrying him around with you tell him what you’re doing, what’s going on, and don’t use babytalk. Talk to him as you would an adult. So that’s what I did, “O.K., Little Firefly, I am going to repair this shelf. First I have to get a hammer and some nails. This is a hammer. These are nails…” It may be coincidence, but all our kids do exceptionally well with verbal and written communication and the first, in particular (who had the most alone time with us) did exceptionally well, including a strong faculty for foreign language learning.
neo-neocon, it sounds like your son was also not exposed to a lot of babytalk.