One thing I’ve noticed is my son’s absolute devil-may-care attitude about the word “No”. I feel like I must now say this word more than any other words in my lexicon combined. At least twenty times an hour “No” occasionally coupled with “Bad” “Hot” or “Ow!” and while he seems to grasp the concept he doesn’t follow through and not do what I’ve just told him not to do so.

I dislike the idea of smacking him at this young age because I don’t freel it teaches him anything except to hit, and when I’m telling him “No” to smacking at me with his hands it semes more than a little counter productive. It’s been suggested to me that moving things away from him doesn’t teach him anything and I’ve observed that in action because there are countless times where something is taken from him and he just laughs and crawls over to where we put it and tries to get it back, laughing all the while about what a fun game this is. Moving him has become our next best solution, but that is only temporarily good. He whines for a little bit and then goes back to what he was doing, or throws a tantrum for a few moments where we try to emphasize that he brought this on himself for trying to pull heavy things down on his head and that we’re only trying to protect him and then he calms down and goes back to doing something else he was told off earlier for doing like tearing apart the yellow pages, or trying to eat remote controls.

Do everyone else’s children prove so vexing or is ours just out to drive me crazy?