No More “No!”
December 29, 2009 by Kerry Stutzman
Filed under Blog
Originally published 9/12/07 by the Love and Logic® Institute.
By the time Jacob was three, he had heard the word ‘No!’ about 15,000 times! And, according to some research, that number is low. So when Jacob’s mom said, “It’s time to take your medicine,” what do you think he said? You guessed it! The problem is, this wasn’t just your typical toddler control battle. Jacob needs his medication to stay alive, because he has cystic fibrosis.
Jacob’s mom, unknowingly, had trained him to say ‘no.’ In fact, she trained him really well! Wise parents learn early on to say ‘no’ as much as necessary but as little as possible. So when can parents safely ‘just say no’?
When children are young and parents can easily enforce the limits they set.
When children respect and love parents enough to do what they ask them to do.
When children are older if consequences will do the teaching if they don’t ‘abide by the no.’
So what about little Jacob? His mom learned how to set limits without saying ‘no’ by using just a couple of Love and Logic techniques like choices and enforceable statements. I am happy to report that Jacob is now enjoying good health and a great relationship with his dear mom.
Thanks for reading.
Foster W. Cline, MD
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Getting a 2 year old off of the word NO can be a very difficult task. I’d be curious to know the mother’s methods for weaning he child off the use of the word. Worse case scenario you just speed up the learning new words process. That may help.
We teach parents to use an “empathetic” one-liner instead of “no.” If parents get really good at “what a bummer” or “so sad” or even “Uh Oh” instead of “NO,” the children will soon be using those words instead of “No.”