I heart Love and Logic!

Overall, Eliot's pretty compliant with how we want him to behave. However, that being said, he's still a 2/3 year old. They have their moments, no matter how angelic they are. **Disclaimer** There's still times I want to pull my hair out with parenting, it's not all butterflies and hugs!

So, L & L. When I taught in the city, our staff was trained using the Love and Logic for Classrooms series. Once I got home w/ Eliot, a friend let me borrow her L&L parenting book, and I love it. I need to reread it now that the words "you turkey" come out of my mouth more than they should. I'm pretty sure that's not on their list of recommendations. While I don't agree 100% with every idea they have, this stage it's been rather helpful.

Here's some before and after L&L conversations we have EVERY DAY.

Before:
M: Eliot, will you go potty? (also insert: I need you to go potty, shouldn't you go potty, etc.)
E: no (also insert: child ignoring mother)

After:
M: Eliot, do you want to use the big potty or the little potty?
E: THE BIG POTTY! (and he runs into the bathroom)
******************************************************************
Before:
M: Eliot, can you go play in your room?
E: no (noticing a theme?)

After:
M:Do you want to play with your trains or Mr. Potato Head?
******************************************************************
Before:
M: You have to hold my hand in the parking lot!
E: (squirm and go the other way)

After:
M: Do you want to hold this hand or this hand in the parking lot?
E: That one.
******************************************************************
You get it. Eliot responds to it like a charm. We have always used their suggestions with time out, too. They recommend using a trigger phrase so he knows what's coming and we've always said, "Oh, how sad!" when he does something he's not supposed to that would warrant a T/O for him. This way he associates the phrase with T/O instead of the particular chair and we can take that cute little phrase w/ us wherever we go. So handy since some of his toddler antics also follow us wherever we go. Turkey.

I got to see the power of this on our trip to Michigan last month when we were in the car. After he finished his snack he dumped the bag over, spilling all the crumbs, smiling rather big at his mess. (Which is a behavior we've corrected before, fyi) Seeing this and not wanting to pull over or yell at him, I said, "oh, how sad!" He immediately started crying and said, "Sorry, Mom!" To which I promptly did a fist pump and cheered.

(not really)

(But I wanted to.)

(Instead I made him listen to Salt-n-Pepa)