Secrets to Parenting Toddlers and Preschoolers

Is it nearly impossible to get your Toddler to listen to you? Do you yell at your kids and then feel guilty about it? It is hard to feel good when your toddler is driving you crazy. There are simple ways to solve these problems? Using the correct tools and tricks you can reduce your stress and bring more smiles to your family.

Firstly and post importantly, try not to use negative language with your toddler, for example: "Don't do... Don't touch... Don't go..." and try to use positive language. So instead of saying 'Don't move' you could say 'stay right here'.

Behavior is driven by emotion. It is not driven by logic. Parents often make the mistake of trying to use logic to fix the problem. Logic does not work. Instead, you need to modify the emotional response inside of your child. Ok, so how do you change a child's emotional state? Language tools! Say that you need to get your 3-year old Emily dressed to go out, but as usual, she will not co-operate. She is much happier playing with her toys and when you tell Emily to come get dressed, she just says "No", or ignores you. You keep asking politely, but eventually frustration takes over. You start raising your voice. Eventually you end up having to gently restrain her as you get her dressed. She is now crying and you are upset that she would not listen. It is just not fun for either of you.

You need to change Emily's emotional state so that she actually wants to get dressed. You should do this by talking to her about things that were interesting for her. You should be secretly planting seeds of suggestion into her mind so that she will welcome the idea of getting dressed. Or, I could distract her from her prior resistance to getting dressed. She would be so distracted that she would hardly even notice that she was completely co-operating.

Here are some more examples how we can turn a negative question with a positive one:

Another powerful tip is to only raise your voice when you need to. If you raise your voice too often, your toddler will turn off and ignore you or even worse, they will learn that to shout all the time is acceptable behavior.