Hellobee Boards

Our friends use the game "red light, green light" to teach their kids to stay out of the street (or to stop at the corner or driveways). I think it worked pretty well for them.

I accidentally stumbled upon a brilliant solution for this with my 2 year old and it's been working for about 4 months now. At gymboree they have a song where you shake these maracas or pound on a air filled thing and then the teacher yells "stop" and everyone freezes in this exaggerated freeze tag like stopping position. Anyway, after a bit of that game, on the street I realized that if I said stop in the fun gymboree song way, she actually stopped and froze in the freeze tag position and thought it was hilarious. So we practice it a lot outside, and she will stop now when she makes a break for it in the parking lot if I say stop, which actually gives me the time to come and get her. Nothing else we did before that worked - not discipline, not stroller threats, not a panicked shout, nothing.

@Rockies11: We do something very similar! Our kids' daycare taught them "go sign" and "stop sign"... so if we shout "STOP SIGN" really loudly, they will immediately stop in their tracks!!

Well at least, they used to... over time, that stopped being as effective alas.

Ugh, my DD is 20 months and is the same way -- it's like she has a little switch in her ears that flips to "off" whenever I say something she doesn't want to hear (and we just had her post-ear tube testing done so I know her hearing is perfectly normal). And she thinks discipline is hilarious. I haven't found a good way to get through to her yet, I just keep repeating myself and correcting the behavior or taking her out of the situation (i.e. lifting her down off the chair if she stands in it or putting her in the stroller if she won't walk nicely). But at the next opportunity, she's back at it, pushing my buttons and testing her boundaries. I don't even think training walks would work for her, she would conveniently "forget" by the next time we went anywhere. The "freeze" thing works now and then, but only if she's in a mood to hear what I'm saying -- if she's determined to do whatever it is I don't want her to do, she's just as deaf to that as she is to anything else I say. Or she hears me, laughs at me, and keeps doing it until I physically go and stop her. Hopefully at some point she'll grow out of it... Anyway, no advice but lots of commiseration. It's tough.

Our LO kept trying to run out on our road around 16 months, and wouldn't listen to us AT ALL. So I told him that if he went to the road, we were going inside. It took about 4-5 times of picking him up and immediately going inside for him to get the picture (after a lot of tears/tantrums).

So when my DS was DD's age now, we could tell him to stop, if a ledge was approaching, or a stair, or some foreseeable danger that he would need to exercise caution and wait for us. He would always listen to us. DD on the other hand does NOT. She just has no fear. She's always covered in bumps and bruises from falling and just overall being more wild than our DS was. Usually if big brother is around and she sees him model the behavior, she occasionally will too, but most times she just doesn't care (17 months old). I feel like at this point there is only so much I can do.