Distract Now, Explain Later--Our wonderful two-year old daughter asked for snacks today while we were in our seats waiting for church to begin. We couldn't give them to her yet, because we need to save our ammo for when she started to get really restless. As usual, I took the wrong approach, and my wife taught me the right approach. I tried to explain, "Honey, church hasn't even started yet. We can give them to you later." This resulting in my little girl looking up at me and saying, "Can I have a snack?" Obviously, my words missed their intended target. My wife, on the other hand, said, "Honey, look at this?" and my daughter forgot about snacks for the time being. Brilliant! I learned then and there an important lesson: although explanation is good, when they're willing to hear it, when they're not, it's sometimes better to just distract them.
Growing Out of Naps--How can you fault a little girl who is growing out of her naps for singing "Twinkle Little Star" or otherwise chatting with herself in her crib? The complication in our situation is that she shares a room with her baby sister, who naps at the same time, so she needs to be quiet. Another complication is that she is not yet ready to skip naps, because doing that makes her grumpy for the whole afternoon. She adores her baby dolls, however, and is usually compliant with our demand to be quiet and go to sleep when we threaten to take them away. But today, it didn't work. We had to stick her in the pack-and-play in our room. Of course, nothing changed. We were unwilling to bring her back down with us in the hopes that she would sleep a little. She doesn't have a room in which to have quiet time, like our son, nor would she be quiet during quiet time anyway. We are hopeful, however, because her moments of focus, communication, and obedience have come on more frequently. So, with no other options available at this point, left her in the pack-and-play and enjoyed her entertaining little conversations with herself over the monitor.
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