Recently, the mom of sixteen-month-old triplets asked for suggestions for disciplining her trio. I thought my advice might be helpful to other moms, hence this blog post. Please add any tips you have, too!First off, this is a hard age. The children are mobile, but not too stable and do not understand any safety issues yet. Everything is new and they are eager to explore. This is when we need to set the rules, because they don’t know any rules. So this is where we set the foundation.
I used a bumbo at first as the “no-no chair.” They sat in it in the corner, turned away from everyone else, for one minute. Then when they were done I had them try to say sorry or sign sorry. I would help them sign sorry and also verbally say it for them, setting the rule that after they are punished they need to say “sorry” to me or whomever they were naughty to.
As they got a bit older and too big for the bumbo, I put them in the laundry room and put a gate in front, for one minute. (One minute per year of their age.) If they were in their high-chair or booster at the table, I would turn them around so they were facing away from the table and everyone else.
One thing that worked really well for me was I would demonstrate the bad behavior and say, “aaah aaah ahhh” then demonstrate the good behavior and say, “yeah”. I would repeat this 3-9x. Someone once told me repeating it 9x that made them understand. And they did. To this day I’ll still say “ahh ahh ahh” and they stop dead in their tracks, one even says “Sorry” right away.
One memory I have is a day when they were jumping on the couch and I would say, “No jumping on the couch, aaah aaah aaaah.” Then put them in the no-no area. This went on for at least 1 hour, rotating all them numerous times into the no-no area. It eventually stuck and the next day, I said, “No jumping on the couch, aaah aaah aaaah” before they got onto the couch and, viola!, no more jumping. I tasted a bit of victory, and that sticking to it paid off. I remember this every time I need to set a new rule: I just need to stick to it and be consistent.
Good luck!
-Jeanmarie
Mom to 3.5-year-old BBG triplets
1 comment:
Children of this age do not have the frontal lobe brain capacity to logistically reason or weigh consequences. You can use situations to "teach" yes, but not until they are closer to 3 years of age, will they be able to decipher if their actions will determine a consequence of a "no no chair". By demonstrating bad behsviors repeadetdly, children learn a "wrote" response. You may think they are reasoning the behavior but they really are just recalling a memorized response.
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