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Friday, August 7, 2009

No No No


My little girl has just begun the great adventure of crawling! It has been very exciting watching her meet this big milestone but now she is into everything! I don't want to constantly be telling her "no" and removing her from the situation, I want to teach her not to do it in the first place. Any suggestions on how to teach an 8 month old what's right and wrong?

5 comments:

Gina said...

The only thing I've ever been told to do is to remove the things she is getting "nos" from, and/or remove her from the situation prior to having to say no, no no all the time. So if she plays with a certain low bookcase and removes all the books and chucks them on the floor...put a couple chairs in front of the bookcase. They are just too little to really grasp and put together "I can't touch that book because mommy will say no." They'll just touch it anyway. :) So remove it from temptation.

Katherine said...

It's really hard for babies and kids so little to learn right and wrong. I agree with Gina that if there are certain things you CAN move or block then remove the temptation is easier. However, I wasn't willing to do that with my dog food/water and movies so I had to keep telling my daughter no and removing her from them. It was frustrating at first, and I felt like she would never get it, but after a few weeks of hard work it paid off. Hang in there, it will happen!

Gretchen said...

How was was B when you were teaching her not to get into the dog food/water and the movies?

Katherine said...

B was about 9 months old when she started crawling so right around then. She found the dog food pretty quickly but I was afraid if I moved it, I wouldn't remember to feed and water the dog! I tried for 2 or 3 weeks and was getting really frustrated when she finally got the concept.

Jen said...

Katherine may want to disown me for saying this, but I am a little blogger illiterate. So I'm not sure who wrote this post. I'm guessing Jessica. Anyway, whoever you are, I totally know the feeling of not wanting to say, "No, no, no" all the time. We have said, "No thanks" and, as weird as it sounds, it makes a big difference. For one thing, it is harder (not impossible, but harder) to yell that phrase. It works best for me (so I don't get riled up) to say it in a sing-songy voice. This may sound funny, but our oldest didn't learn to say "No!" for a long time because of it. Just a thought! And good luck! (Our baby is just mastering real crawling, too, and she is all over.)