Parenting a toddler: Why it's important to keep your mind open

Often people get accused of thinking “inside of the box”, meaning that they are not being creative when confronted with a problem.

As parents of toddlers, I know it’s easy to get tired, which leads to having a shorter “fuse” and being frustrated easily. This leads to saying “No” a lot, which toddlers hate.

Framing situations

Recently I was vacuuming the house. I was playing with my kids beforehand, and I figured they wouldn’t be so keen to switch to housework.

Now, situations can be “framed” in a certain way, which create different emotional responses. I wanted my kids to think of the vacuuming as “fun”. To do this I simply said, “Hey girls, let’s vacuum the house and you can help me move the furniture”. I used a positive tone of voice, and it worked. It’s not always that easy, but you must be congruent with your voice and body movements to create that “positive” spin on the task.

One of my girls decided that she’d help by using her toy vacuum. That seemed cool to me until she was literally crashing into me everywhere I went. Over and over, she was in my way and it was making my job difficult.

I started to get frustrated. Why? Because inside of my own mind, I was trying to surprise my wife. She had mentioned that the vacuuming needed to be done (as in, SHE was planning to do it), and I wanted it to be all done as a surprise for when she got out of the shower. She works hard enough already around the house.

Coming up with a better plan

At first, it was a real pain in the butt to have my daughter crashing into me with her toy vacuum. I almost snapped at her in a harsh tone. But thankfully I challenged myself to come up with a better plan. After all, it was my idea to have them help and she didn’t deserve to be snapped at.

Here’s what I said to her: “Hey sweetie – can you help me? I need you to vacuum behind me to make sure that I don’t miss spots. So every time I finish in a spot, you can come behind me and do that same spot”. She thought that was a great idea. She wasn’t in my way any more. I kept telling her what a great job she was doing.

Using a positive instead of a negative

Understand the key point here: Instead of telling my daughter to STOP doing something, I asked her to START doing something slightly different than she was already doing. I used a positive instead of a negative.

She knew that her vacuuming was just make believe, and she didn’t really believe she was doing work. But it was something that we did together. My other daughter was happy just moving chairs for me and picking up toys. The three of us had fun.

The cute part was at the end. As I was putting the vacuum away, my daughter said to me, “Daddy, can I put my toy vacuum away in the closet with your big vacuum?” I just thought that was too cute.

A few minutes earlier I was about to snap at my child for getting in my way. I was just frustrated. Can you imagine what a damper that would have put on my play time with the kids? It took me only 5 seconds to come up with a better solution. It really can be that easy.

Keep your mind open to new ideas

I simply want to encourage all of you to keep your mind open to new ideas. Often it is easy to find a way to say “yes” to your child rather than bark “no” at them. You just need to think outside of the box. All too often we say “no” because we are tired, frustrated or lazy. Challenge yourself. Reap the rewards.

About the Author: Chris Thompson is the owner of TalkingToToddlers.com. He wrote and recorded the “Talking to Toddlers” audio course that has become an international best seller in the category of toddler parenting audio books. It is the number one ranked toddler parenting course in the world (as rated by clickbank.com).