Where do I find intelligent reading about raising a toddler?

Question

I'm stumped. I want to do this right. I'm new at this. Bradley is a boy and very stubborn. He is constantly testing me and I don't know how to approach certain situations the "right" way. Time outs, spanking, talking, removing from the situation, raising your voice, redirection, distraction, etc. What works best? What makes things worse? What will make him more violent towards others? Ugh! He does not want to listen to me, when I lean down to his level and try to talk to him he smacks at me, pulls my hair and smiles. Not in a mean way just in a very young little boy way. Smacking his hand does not faze him. He listens to men but not me or his grandmother. Things he should not do automatically become the most interesting thing to do. I want to read and educate myself on boys his age (13 months). Parenting sites do not delve into the psychological thought processes enough so I would like someone to direct me to real educational sites or books on this subject. Please!

Answer 1

I know from your questions that he is a live wire. My little guy is SO mellow. But I can recommend an excellent book. I used it for my daughter, who was and is very dramatic. This book is amazing. It helps explains things, makes them simple. It talks about all the 'what ifs' and how reasoning and explaining things when the child is upset, is pointless. Here is a link for it. I totally recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effect...

Answer 2

There are a couple of books that I had to study for one of my education classes that I absolutely adore.  They teach about how to set limits and enforce them but still teach by loving your children.  They're great.  I read the education alternatives to these, but the parenting ones are awesome as well.  Read "Setting Limits" by Robert MacKenzie and "Parenting with Love and Logic" by Foster Cline and Jim Faye.

Briefly, what works best:  Setting a reasonable limit, providing choices inside of that limit, and enforcing that limit.  Set your limit, like no climbing in the dishwasher.  (This is a big one in our house).  While you are loading/unloading give him a choice of what he does.  He can play with his toys in the kitchen with you or in another room; he can have a snack or play with some cooking spoons.  He can do this or that.  The choices you give are always ones that you don't care about either way, where it doesn't matter to you.  For bedtime it could be wearing red pajamas or blue.  Give him a choice about what he can do while you are in the dishwasher.  If he tries to climb in you give him a choice that he can make and enforce your limit.  Ours ends up being something like "You can't play in the dishwasher.  You can go play with your toys or play with Daddy."  I'll take him down from the dishwasher and ask him again what he wants to do.  "You can play with your toys or with Daddy.  You decide."  Of course he's only 15 months old and doesn't understand all of it, but it's great practice for both of us.  Usually an extra "Go play" will get him running off.  If it doesn't, I pick one of the choices I gave him and take him there to do that.  Now it's just enforcing the limit.  Every time he comes back to try to get in the dishwasher I close it and tell him that he can go do this or go do that.  

As they get older this is so powerful.  For bedtime you set the limit that bedtime is in 10 minutes, or at 8:30, or whatever.  Then you give tons of choices about bedtime.  "Do you want to wear your red pajamas or your blue?", "Brush your teeth or pajamas first?", "Drink of water or drink of milk?", "Bedtime story or no story?", "Story about this or about that?", "Piggy back ride to bed or walk?", "light on or light off?" etc.  You set the limit, but you give him tons of opportunities to make choices inside of it.  This helps him feel like he shares the control and that it isn't just you forcing him to do something.  It gets a lot more cooperation and happiness than "It's bed time.  Put on your pajamas, brush your teeth, get a drink, and go to bed".  Even though you give all of the choices, you still enforce bedtime.  Usually you'll get a lot less resistance if you've involved him a lot with the process, but sometimes they do still resist.  When they do you pull rank, but nicely.  You can ask who has been making all of the decisions about going to bed and point out that he has.  Then tell him that you get to make a choice to, and that is that it's bed time now.  Give one last choice, and finish up bedtime.

That's a basic 'what works', but there are other things that work well too.  Look at those books and see what you can learn.  They focus on discipline as teaching kids what is right and teaching them why as well as teaching them what is wrong and why.  Removing from the situation, time outs done correctly, and then talking all help resolve discipline issues.  

Time outs done incorrectly, spanking, raising voice all make the problem worse.  It isn't about what you do or what punishments you use, it's about what you do to involve your child in learning why something is good or bad.    You're going to do great if you make sure not to ignore reasons.

Answer 3

you should make a time out chair in a corner away from anything that could amuse him you should  make sure he stays there check on hime every 5 minutes every time he gets strikes do this and make him stay there 10 minutes for each strike make it another strike if he leaves the chair that should teach him to be good because he won't want to leave because that would add more time if you do this he won't stop leaving the chair he will stop being bad because he will get bored of it and make sure that chair is facing the corner not the room.

Answer 4

Im in the same boat!!! Looking forward to seeing the responses. I too am a first time mom.  My 18 month old (14 months adjusted) seems to be running all over me. I hate disciplining him but I don't know what else to do other than popping him on his hand or leg. Neither fazes him but a look from his dad or just him saying his name is enough to make him scratch his head and act bashful for what he was doing. He'll be starting school in September and I definitely don't want him hitting the other kids because I do it to him. Thanks for asking this question. You are not alone!

Answer 5

hi there. oh, bradley...my niece is a very strong willed child, and i know my sis in law has done a lot of reading -- i'll ask her and get back to you. in the meantime, i can share a few things about learning. and these are scientific facts, not opinions: i am going to cut and paste from an answer i gave a long time ago regarding disciplne, because it's a lot to type, and ruby is napping, so i should be, too. one sec....i'll find the answer.

edit: keep in mind that while it is good practice to begin verbalizing reasons, abstract reasoning is impossible for a toddler to understand. again, it is good practice to use the language, but it will not get you the results you want at this age. it is in fact important "what type of punishment" one uses in the sense that one should avoid punishment all together whenever possible. positive reinforcement is the best teaching tool you have until your child has abstract thinking capabilities. it is good to lay the foundation for reasoning so that when they are ready to understand they are familiar with the ideas, but at this point it is useless without positive reinforcement. and that is a fact. it is true that for some kids, the gentle, reasoning response is reinforcing on its own. but that is as far as the real effectiveness goes at this age.

here's a start:

there is actually a scientific answer to this question, but it depends on one thing: what is your goal? if your goal is to teach the child the desirable behavior, time out is the way to go. if your goal is simply to stop the negative behavior while it is happening, then you choose spanking or yelling or some type of what we call "type 1 punishment." type 1 punishment is when you introduce an aversive stimuli. in layman's terms, type 1 is when you do something to the person that they do not like. type 1 punishments do NOT teach positive behaviors. in fact, they may teach negative ones as they model hostility. but they do have a place. if your child is about to run into the street, hit another kid, touch the hot stove, then you yell, smack, whatever you have to do to STOP the behavior right then. but the problem with these punishments is that they only work when the punisher is present. if you want your child to learn how to behave positively, then you shoudl use positive reinforcement -- catch him or her doing what you WANT and reward him or her, even with just praise. (whatever is reinforcing to the child is a good reinforcer...depends on the kid. praise it an across the board good bet, though) for discipline, choose type 2 punishment, which includes time out. type 2 punishments involve removing the person from the chance to do things they like. so don't do a time out in a play room, for example. a few other time out guidelines: no longer than 5 minutes, and if the child completes the time out agreeably, praise him or her at the end. now, this may take a little restraint. as a culture, we are taught to lash out when we are angry (a perfect example of how punishment teaches negative behavior). however, it has been proven by generations of behavioral psychologists that animals and humans LEARN via positive reinforcement and type 2 punishments -- not type 1.

the most important thing, the most helpful thing, and perhaps the hardest thing, is to change YOUR paradigm. you want to stop thinking about how to stop the negative behaviors and think instead about encouraging the positive behaviors. sounds simple/stupid, but it is a huge in terms of restructuring your reactions to make them more effective. we are socialized to react/to punish, so we all tend to react to the negatives aggressively. it doesn't work, and it can make things worse.

this isn't going to help you with everything you are asking, and i will let you know when i get some book titles that address willful toddlers. but hopefully this helps a bit.

Answer 6

Yeah that sounds about normal...

There are a gazillion books out there, but for the hundreds of pages I read I only gleaned a few helpful sentences. I also feel the tremendous burden of trying to know the right or best thing to do, to teach my son to respect me and to obey rules and shape the man he will grow up to be.

At his age, his thought processes are pretty simple: "What happens if I do this?" and "I will do everything I can to get my way."

I'm not going to pretend I know what's best since I think I have always rather overreacted to my son. My theory is that calm but implaccable authority, and taking the trouble to punish for *every* infraction, is best, and I wish I could say I've always done it. But I have lost patience with him more often than I could be proud of.

Good luck.