Last week, I happened upon what I believe to be the most underutilized strategy in my toddler discipline playbook. Okay, so I don’t really have a toddler discipline playbook. If I did, though, this strategy would be listed as a go to method for addressing tricky toddler behavioral challenges. I discovered it as I was trying to corral Dylan in the bathroom so that I could change his training pants. He was fooling around and trying to avoid going in the bathroom, and I was beginning to get frustrated. Earlier that day, I had made a commitment to myself that … Continue reading →

I was about to sit down and write something about toddlers and testing limits. After all, there was a whole lot of that going on around here today. It seemed as if Dylan and I went from one tense situation to another as he pushed and pushed and pushed some more. Of course, the fact that I went to bed late last night did not help matters any, because it is much easier to deal with typical toddler behavior when one is well rested. While my day did contain plenty of fodder for an article about why and how toddlers … Continue reading →

This week, my family is on vacation. We have been having a great time, and Dylan has been doing very well as far as behaving appropriately and listening to us – much of the time. I think that there are a couple of reasons why things are going smoothly for us, even though our days have been much busier and exciting than they are at home. The first thing that I think is helping us to have a great vacation is to keep our expectations realistic. By choosing restaurants where we do not have to wait too long for a … Continue reading →