I am new at this parenting thing and there is a constant fight between my own idea of parenting v/s what is taught to us v/s what really happens !
So please ladies and gents , even though these may seem to be trivial issues , but for me , being a first time parent , I feel I get easily concerned and unable to look at the bigger picture . This is why I seek your advise now , in managing my one year old’s behaviour.
He’s an overly active kid MA .. but has become very testing, been trying to show him “no” means “no” .. but I guess I am doing something wrong , coz instead of learning his boundaries , he turns into a little hulk and aggressively throws stuff around or try and return to the thing he is being asked to stay away from ..
Are all kids this way? I thought this happens when kids turn two , is this normal child behaviour at 12 months? How do we engage the child to teach them things like : not to open and close drawers it might hurt their hands, touch wires , touch electronics, touch the bins etc ..
Most important how do you teach them the concept of taking " no " seriously by a parent?
PS : for a while I tried the distraction method , that didnt help much , he seems to be extremely determined and just wont let go Also tried a bit of daant to get him to realize he’s making me angry , but he doesnt bat an eye on me trying to tell him off !
Tried telling him piyaar sai , he understands but tests his boundaries but wont let go still
I tried to let him check things out under supervision to kill the curiosity , didnt work ..
What do i do now?
I just supervise him and continually distract, admonish lightly and explain. I think consistency is key in anything you are trying to instill in your child. My son has given up most of the bad things he did (wires and outlets) but still throws tantrums when he plays with the shoes or tries to crawl into a cabinet and we tell him not to. At the end of the day…as long as you are watching him and he is safe…he will be fine…your son is just strong-willed, that’s an awesome trait I think all first-time parents go thru this, where you have an idea of how to parent but it’s nothing like that IRL. I know i have had my moments where i just don’t get what to do so my son will understand…but i’vd just learned to follow his lead and be consistent in whatever i do. It’s less frustrating for everyone
Thanks for sharing your thoughts S_Punk .. So you dont say anything to him while you are in the process of distracting him or do you tell him its wrong to touch wires , for example? of do you just focus on the act of taking the child away from the object and not speak in the process so they will see the action with a whole focus?
I lose my patience on some days and end up daanting him as well , then I feel guilty .. also I have kept so many toys for him yet he manages to ignore each and every one of those but land in all the wrong places despite being told not to. So basically , I am trying very hard not to make him feel trapped where he cant touch anything he wants .. but looks like that is exactly what is happening!
For example, he wants to open and shut the drawers , I dont let him, he wants to go up and down the stairs , I have put stair gates on and he hates me now , he wants to play with the wires , i dont let him, he wants to drop the laptops i dont let him, he wants to play with real mobiles , i dont want that either ! See the trend here?
Tell me ways of creating distractions? maybe I am not distracting him good enough? He’s got really good toys of all sorts , noisy toys, puzzles, soft toys, car , rocking horse, balls , balloons .. I dont just keep them there, I even try to get him to play with them by playing with the toys myself but he knows its distraction and just doesnt give into it so easily
Probs hard to believe but some children don’t go through this phase at all in a major way. I often wonder whether it’s nature or nurture.
I think you have a forbidden fruit scenario going on right now. I think you might need to allow a few of the things as I imagine he’ll quickly get bored. For example the drawers, the stairs. Don’t have the laptops or mobiles out, don’t use them in front of him except when essential.
The quickest way for children to stop trying to do something is if they have a bad experience but you have to balance allowing the experience whilst making sure they aren’t going to hurt themselves.
Every time i pull him away, i explain why it’s wrong and then distract him with a different activity. When distracting him i always try to act super-excited and surprised so he sees my reaction and becomes genuinely interested. If i act frustrated he immediately picks up on it and becomes stubborn. Usually an “OMG LOOK A PUPPY dramatic gasp” gets him to stop whatever he’s doing and look for the puppy (his stuffed toy). I do it as many times as he keeps up the behavior…it’s frustrating but it ends up working eventually, in my case.
I have to agree with stoppit as well tho…maybe you should let him do some of these things. My son was in the habit of opening and closing drawers but he got his finger stuck (very slightly) in one drawer when i was busy and obvs it hurt him…he cried, i consoled him. He has never touched our drawers after that lol. Don’t let him hurt himself but remove all dangerous items and let gim go free…maybe the novelty will wear off.Also…just avoid opportunities where he can mess about. If he opens bedroom dresser drawers always keep your room shut…or get the thingies from babies r us that keep drawers and cabinets locked from babies. My son also loves playing with cell phones…we’ve given him an old broken Nokia. He loves it!
Totally agree. This is the approach I use and 9 times out of 10 kiddo gets bored of opening a particular cupboard or trying to operate a gadget etc. Obviously I draw the line if it’s something that will cause harm or injury.
Ok I will try looking more excited when I distract him …At the moment I am trying to get the staircase anger out of his system , by letting him climb up himself when we are going upstairs .. I am hoping that will make him feel less curious about the stairs at least !
foSo point being whats the best way to teach a child , No means NO ? or is he still too young for it ?
I did try that trick with an old laptop and an old mobile , gave it to him to have a play and get it all out of his system , but he is a clever bunny, he knows within minutes they are distractions and wants to use the real laptop and wants the mobile phone which works ! he can tell the difference due to sounds and lights
I agree with Stoppit, my toddler is super active as well and wants to do and find every hidden item. Why haven’t you placed safety locks on stuff? I learned to keep our house free of things and make sure everything was safe. We don’t even have decorative items on our media cabinet (the bottom 3 shelves are completely empty and we have few things on the 4th shelve.) My LO was into pulling wires and putting them in his mouth …and we made sure NEVER to leave the wire plugged (only wire that was always out was for the laptop.) but we didn’t make a big fuss abt it.
Anyways as far as cabinet goes we have most of them with safety locks, but keep few of them unlocked. LO can take out the pots and pan and play with them anytime. Right now his fav. habit is taking all the spoons, forks, and butter knifes out of the drawer…placing them on the stairs and counting them. I or hubby actually helps him count them too. After we are done he puts them right back in the drawer.
Also you have to pick your battles, few things like hitting, biting is not tolerated at all, but running around, messing with food, opening all the shan masalay boxes (one of my LO’s fav. thing to do…)I shouldn’t fuss over too much.
#]]]]]]Yeah hvnt got safety locks on anything at the moment .. I dread the time already when he will be able to figure out all of the things he sees around are storage places and he can have an awesome time digging into them
Ok , so I have removed all the decorative stuff out of his way and am also trying to clear as much space as possible.
I let him play with belts and straps and hangers as well so he doesnt feel curious all the time .. so much so that I even emptied all our bins and cleaned them , dried them then put bags in them and gave it to him so he could put in what ever he likes and get over with his obsession with the bins !
I like the picking my battles bit .. think its time I start doing that , coz he does bite alot and loves pulling my hair , how do you react when he goes into a no go zone like biting or hitting?
hittng,spittin and bitin are strictly off limits. time out immediately. followed by an explanation as to why it happened.
you were a daredevvil too CB .. genes are biting u in the butt and somewhere your mommy is giggling hehe.
it will settle.. you are on the right path. keep at it. they dont learn overnight. let him experiment with non dangerous stuff.. like ppl have said.. pick ure battles. kids get tired of hearing NO all the time.
if he throws tantrums a lot.. put him in his timeout zone.. and walk away. genie needed a lot of time outs cuz she did it all.. writing on walls, pulling wires, shoving keys into sockets. man. it wasnt easy. but .. just have to keep telling him… until they get it.
Khawa, I had to beg my mom not to ever give that “you are getting it back now” grin , coz it just made it harder for me to bear the brunt .. Karma , wish this phenomenon never existed ..
Ok so genie needed time outs , man , I have a soft spot for her , poor her .. how old was she when she started getting them ? you reckon daredevil will get the concept of time outs?
One of the things that gets me worried so much is if I am putting pressure on him too early on :hinna: I am careful now coz even his doctor asked me if i was planning to put him into uni at age 5 !!! I guess the doctor realized I am the mother-zilla that every kid dreads to have !!
So yeah tell me more about time outs please , I am going to read about them too , but I need to know from the personal experiences here , how you started time outs and best way to get the child to realize its a learning point for him and not just another restraining order on him !
for the hair pulling, he use to do that a lot and i wouldn’t make a sound or change my face expression when he did it. So it became borning for him. he has completely stop doing it. I read on babycenter.com that both pulling hair and biting is more for the reaction they enjoy thn the action. So no reaction means no fun.
For Hitting (he doesn’t bite), i pull his hand and hit him (very lightly) and tell him NO! and say “we don’t hit anybody”. It has gotten much better and inshAllah this stage will pass. BUt my LO is older thn yours and i wouldn’t recd. hitting him (even very lightly,) just yet…he might become more stubborn.
I havne’t started the time out zone thing yet because it don’t think it will work on my LO…he will just run all over the place But try that with him.
yup time out didnt work in my baby’s case , he just ran, crawled , pulled and pushed and I dont want to use his cot for this reason or else he will give me terrible time getting into it at bed time ! so I dont know really where to begin from
CB there are a lot of things we learn from our child and thn become better parents Another example is we don’t take our son for things that will require him to sit and listen or anything that will require him to slow down (we have learn from past experiences that he is just not that type of a kid.) Places where he can run around are the best for my little one. Even the zoo trip is horrible because all he wants to do is run off instead of watching the animals
So stay calm and see what he wants to do and what works for him…instead of trying methods that you have read about…becuz you know thats not working.
You’ve gotta baby proof the house. He’s not gonna know the consequences of opening and closing drawers, even if he slams it on his fingers. They’re too little to get that and they’ll keep doing it because they can. So just put locks on all your drawers and cabinets. Easily available in stores and very easy to install. Same goes for all outlets. Wires need to be kept out of reach from them.
They are just babies, they won’t get these things until they’re around 2 (sometimes not even then!) So do what you can to keep the home safe for them.
If he’s overly active he’ll need to challenge his energy in one way or another. Get him a jumperoo. Or take him to gymboree classes.
They’re super curious about every single thing at this age and it’s really unfair to stop them from exploring .. but if you make it safe for him there will be no reason to stop him right?
I have a very active, curious and stubborn 12 month old as well. What helps him calm down is books, a couple of minutes in his jumperoo, interactive toys. Maybe try finger painting with him??
^ Agree with Wendy. It’s your job as a parent to completely baby proof your house. You should put locks on all the cabinets and drawers. Put the wires away as they can be a strangling hazard. I also would not let the child play with hangers since it can poke them in the eye. Put away your laptops too. Maybe leave one cabinet and drawer open with pots and pans or wooden spoons that he can explore.
The thing is I don’t know why some parents think their kid is the most difficult or extremely hyper. The truth is at least 95% of kids are hyper and curious and want to explore. It’s all part of being a child. I personally have never seen a toddler who just likes to sit in one corner and play with their toys quietly and I have been around a lot of kids!
If he’s trying to play with something safe, let him. Encourage his curiosity. Also try taking him out. Toddlers have so much energy and it really helps to take them out for an hour everyday.
I personally don’t believe in timeouts for kids under the age of 3. I think it’s futile because they can’t really comprehend the consequences of their actions. So when they do have a tantrum, just distract them and stay calm. The minute they realize you’re frustrated and angry, they cry more and act worse. In fact often times when my 2 yr old throws a tantrum, the best approach is to sit her down and give her a hug! She snaps out of it right then. I don’t know, I think toddlers are a lot of work but they are still innocent, curious little people and we really need to slow down on disciplining them and react appropriately to their curiosity and tantrums.
Oh and for biting etc. I would again suggest to ignore it and not show a reaction. The more you say NO the more he’ll do it coz in his world, that elicits a reaction from mommy and gets her attention. So ignoring is the best approach and eventually he’ll get bored of it. Now if a 4 yr old was doing that, then yes you will have to be strict and reprimand him.
I really like rabia’s suggestion of having some accessible areas such as the pots and pan cupboard.
Since you bought up the mother-zilla thing… a child’s behaviour is molded by the adults around. You need to let him have his freedom and relinquish some control. His tantrums are probably just a manifestation of his frustration. He can’t do anything he wants.
I think all first-time parents go thru this, where you have an idea of how to parent but it’s nothing like that IRL. I know i have had my moments where i just don’t get what to do so my son will understand…but i’vd just learned to follow his lead and be consistent in whatever i do. It’s less frustrating for everyone
He’s got really good toys of all sorts , noisy toys, puzzles, soft toys, car , rocking horse, balls , balloons .. I dont just keep them there, I even try to get him to play with them by playing with the toys myself but he knows its distraction and just doesnt give into it so easily 
hehe.