Parenting Tip of the Day: When dealing with undesirable behavior from your toddler, keep your cool and rely on your two best friends: Distraction and Redirection. DISTRACTION to stop the behavior from going farther and REDIRECTION to get your child to do a different desirable behavior that they are motivated to do. Don't even attempt negotiating with a toddler or trying to make them do anything by asking or telling, they're just not old enough for those behavior strategies yet.
Here's a recent scenario from my house: My 24 month old son threw his lunch plate on the floor, a common occurrence, and after firmly reminding him that we do not throw plates (as if he was actually listening to that) I asked him to pick it up. He told me "no," which was my cue to use distraction and redirection. In this case the distraction was that I nicely got him down from his chair and with a completely different (positive) tone, I excitedly suggested that "we" put the plate in the dishwasher (something he likes to do), which was the redirection to more appropriate behavior. He immediately changed his attitude from defiant to happy and compliant. He put the plate in the dishwasher by himself, I praised him, he was proud of himself, and we moved on to playing with toys. Will he throw his plate again? Of course. This is a stage he will get over eventually. What I did here was to stop a bad behavior, manipulate the situation to get a good behavior while still allowing him to feel independent, and keep my sanity by avoiding a silly battle with a 2 year old.
Teaching good behavior is much more effective when it's done positively and done using age appropriate strategies. As a parent, it's hard to not lose it sometimes, but taking a second to take a breath and rethink your strategy before reacting negatively can make a huge difference in the response you get from your young child.
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