Little Miss Independent

Anyone who has a toddler will know that a predominant word in a child’s early vocabulary is “No!” It’s pretty standard, and there are ways around it: You offer alternatives, rather than questions that invite a yes or no answer; you distract; you pick your battles; you employ tactical bribery; you have a gin and tonic. The thing with children, though, is that as soon as you have developed a coping strategy for one particular phase, you look up to find that you are no longer in that phase, and your well-thought-out strategies are no longer applicable.

The phase that we are currently in the thick of is the “I want to do everything by myself” phase. “I want to pour my milk by myself,” inevitably ends with milk-soaked jeans. “I want to cut up my supper by myself” sends mutilated pieces of sausage flying across the room. “I want to chose my clothes by myself” results in a pair of wellies being teamed with a swimsuit and a knitted strawberry hat, and woe betide me if I dare to interfere.

All quite amusing, certainly, but when it comes to things like crossing roads it gets less fun. It also doesn’t help that my daughter is one of the most stubborn, least easily diverted children I have ever come across, and has a spectacular pair of lungs on her which she puts to great use when she doesn’t get her own way about something. As a rule, I have a very low tolerance for screaming hissy-fits, and when I’m at home I tend to employ a selective deafness approach, but when you are actually in the path of oncoming traffic, there is rarely time to negotiate. This is where the tactics from phase one (”No!”) come in. Rather than saying “Hold my hand while we cross the road,” which consistently elicits an autopilot refusal, I have implemented the Offer Alternatives technique: “Are you going to hold my hand while we cross the road, or shall I strap you into the buggy?” works like a charm.

When is comes to eating out I tend to go with a combination of Distraction and Pick Your Battles. When meals at home are refused, that’s that. I would never force her to eat anything, but if she’s not hungry enough for pasta she’s not hungry enough for ice cream either, which in turn, often requires a touch of selective deafness. When we are out, however, it is simply not an option to have her scream the place down. For one thing, I would never be able to go anywhere twice. So this is where I come armed with pens, paper, glue and scissors (the Distraction part), and resign myself to the fact that Ruby having nothing but ice cream for lunch once in a blue moon is really not the worst thing in the world (yep, that would be me Picking My Battles). Anything for an easy life!

I have to admit, though, that Tactical Bribery is my personal favourite. When it gets to nap time and madam has decided she is not going to sleep, I will ask her if she wants to do some painting. Of course the answer is always yes, so I say that she is much too tired to do painting now, but if she has a sleep she can do some painting when she wakes up. It works for lots of things: “If you put all your toys back in the basket, we can sit down and read a story together;” “When I’ve finished brushing your teeth we can go to the swings.” The key is that I only ever promise things that she would be getting anyway, but luckily for me she hasn’t figured this out yet.

So, I guess that if you keep the tactics simple, they can still apply even when the phase changes. I can even see a modified version working on a stroppy teenager, and I’m sure many of you will be shaking your heads at my naïveté, but I am nothing if not optimistic! Obviously, if I were able to claim that my tactics worked all the time, or even that I had the discipline to stick to my own rules consistently, rather than losing my rag and shouting, I would not only be irritatingly smug, but I would probably be very rich too, but of course they don’t, and of course I’m not. And that, my friends is where the large gin and tonic comes in!