Hellobee Boards

Three is such a hard age! I struggle with keeping my patience with my DD (also 3) but I have found a few things that help. First, we eliminated warnings. I think DD was pushing to see how many times I would repeat myself/warn her before she actually got punished. So now I tell her once and count to three; if she hasn't responded within that time frame, I react immediately instead of giving her more warnings. Secondly, positive reinforcement helps us a lot. We give instant, detailed positive recognition when she does something well and reinforce positive behaviors/attitudes with nightly bedtime stories (Mrs. Twine wrote a great post about positive discipline and Mrs. Jacks has a fantastic post about storytelling as a way to influence behavior). Lastly, I try to have one positive experience with DD a day. I think sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day struggle and forget all the fun you can have together. DD and I either do one special project every day together or we spend some quality time before bed. I think it gives us time to reconnect and add a little bit back into the love bank.

@looch: I like your approach. Instead of an event just happening, your LO is being alerted to the upcoming transition from play to bath (or whatever transition is about to happen). I think it helps to manage expectations and make your LO feel like he is part of the process instead of being at the mercy of the process.

LO is 27 months and we're starting to deal with some of the same. The transitions definitely help, though sometimes there are situations where no amount of that will help (a fun park, a sandbox, etc). At home I try to focus on some aspect of an upcoming task that I know he likes. Like if he doesn't want to go upstairs for a bath, I'll talk up how he'll get to pour all the bubbles and then he's all about it. Also, we've had some success saying "night night" to toys and talking about how they need to rest too, etc etc.