We have been very focussed on Toddler Tactics this week! Isabelle is certainly asserting her independence, personality and let's us know when she isn't happy about something.
She is going through a phase of hitting, herself, toys and us, and this has been our first major discipline challenge as parents...... I have been doing lots of reading and we are taking the approach of telling her that it's not nice to hit, and then mainly ignoring her or distracting her. Distract distract distract seems to work best at this tender age of 14 mths where she doesn't realy understand an explaination and nothing else really works.
She does understand what she is doing wrong though - she will look at us in the eye and deliberately hit if we take something from her, or she will stomp her feet to express her disapproval of whatever we have taken from her. We try to keep the room as kid friendly as possible so we don't have to constantly take things away that she isn't meant to have but things like the remote and phone etc sometimes get left in reach!
Funny story... the other night I was on all four's trying to encourage our little man to change possie to head down as he has been lying transverse. Anyway Al decided to give my backside a bit of a tap, Izzy saw him do it and decided to go up to my not-so-little backside and slap it herself! Needless to say Al thought it was THE funniest thing ever and keeps talking about it now. Am I taming one toddler or 2?? Mmmmmmmm!
I am looking at the positives of this age because it would be so easy to focus on how difficult having an active, headstrong toddler can be, especially while pregnant.
There will be no Wicked Ones, Terrible Twos etc in this house! We have a Wonderful One! and will have a Terrific Two and Three!!! The joy and blessing of seeing our little girl grow, learn and explore is just too much of a privilege to focus on the negative!
