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When my daughter was a newborn she cried when she was hungry or tired pretty much. So I did start agreeing that a newborns wants are a newborns needs.

I laugh with my husband now about her opinionated cries. She has definite preferences now on what way to be held and what activities she wants to do. While we try to respect her wants, there's more than just her wants that make up a household. Like she may really want to pinch the dog but the dog doesn't want to be pinched, dog wins that want contest. So already we've started redirecting her actions at 6 months.

As for other things it's give and take, sometimes she wants to be picked up right that minute but we can't so hopefully she learns patience but there's only so much patience I expect her to have at 6 months, more will be expected as she gets older.

So I guess for us we'll treat it as a slow process of teaching a child to respect others wants as well as their own. I'm not sure if that's the definition of spoiling but 'What I want is what I get' is the definition to me. I think for us we'll tend to go to the spoiling side as far as attention goes and the opposite way for material possessions.

@Andrea, she knows the garbage can is off-limits and will stop, look guilty, and sometimes even complain when I catch her trying to open it, but she'll definitely come back and try again. Don't think self-control is a large part of her make up yet

@Andrea: I agree, figuring out when to step in and when to stay out seems like the hardest part of parenting.

I think going too far to one side isnt the best idea since kids need to have a chance to learn on their own but at the same time learning is a process and guides are helpful. Figuring out a balance is tricky, when does the child need pushed and when is regression just a normal part of the learning process to be dealt with more gently will be a challenge.

With running we always expected peaks and valleys in our training with the peaks getting higher and the valleys (or bad workouts) not being as bad. I guess that's what I expect for her behavior.

praise is something i think about a lot. this is a great article called the inverse power of praise:

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

the article mentions how they gave a group of kids a test and told half the kids that they did well because they were smart, and half the kids they did well because they tried hard.

when they asked the kids whether they wanted to take a second test that was harder or easier, the "smart" kids said easier. the "tried hard" kids chose the harder test. Basically when we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them they are smart and not to take risks so people continue to see you as smart. But when we praise for effort, we tell them they have control over their success.

So now we always try to praise Charlie for his efforts and we don't tell him that he's smart. He's still a little too young to understand probably, but never too early too start!

@Andrea oh that would make me pick her up too Poor thing!