To tell my almost 12 month old “no”

[scarybuttrue]

Is it too early to teach “no”?
There are things I don’t want him to touch, like the telly etc.
I have said no and he laughs, I’m not sure if he understands. Is it too early to start discipline?
He will be one in just over 2 weeks.

It’s because it stimulates the same part of the brain as pleasure and why “no” doesn’t work well at this stage. It’s better to just remove him with a stern face and say ”we don’t touch fragile things” than shouting “no” or you’ll keep triggering a laughing response until he develops more cognitively.

I say no and give a firm stop hand signal as well. My 13 month old granddaughter is a bugger for the dogs water but now I just put my hand up and she swerves away pretending she was never going for it anyway. She's been walking since she was 10 months so it's been a steep learning curve for us all.

@scarybuttrue as baby is newly mobile, now is the time to crawl around at his eye level and spot the hazards. Can the tv go on the wall. Any chests of drawers that could be pulled over need anchoring to a wall. We had a fire guard for years , it was ugly but saved kids falling on the stone hearth. Ornaments go up high or in a cupboard.

I would communicate with as few words as possible emphasis on stern face. Eg goes to touch oven door “No, hot!” Move baby away and distract. To him it will be a game and he will try it again.

Good luck OP you are entering a very tiresome phase but no phase lasts for ever.

Surely you've told him no long before now. Surely when they touch something you don't want them to you say no or if they do something they shouldn't you say no. I can remember quite clearly telling DS no from about the same time he could crawl
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Oh, stop it.

Whatever age you start is fine. Tell him no as many times as it takes him to learn.

Depends what you mean by discipline, you can't punish a baby, or do a proper consequence like you would a 5 year old. I simply said "no" firmly and then removed whatever the item was, or redirected the baby to something appropriate. At that age and stage, you do need to constantly watch them and constantly help them understand what is safe/appropriate to play with, they will not know themselves and their natural instinct is to explore through touch and often taste. Don't expect that he'll be able to ignore that instinct just because you've said no once, it needs to be a continual boundary and as he grows up he'll learn to understand what that means through the repetition of the word No and then being redirected to a Yes object.

There is nothing wrong with saying 'no'. Say no, then move them away from whatever they're after. Your child will learn that no means no and that it isn't a game.

I always said, “oh, no thank you!” I honestly started Way before age 1!

I found the word danger more effective. For some reason the word no is just a game to toddlers. There is an old poem that starts " a baby with a wise mama never hears the word no" so must be an age old problem.

1. Laughing is a normal response to rejection/criticism at a young age, it helps them to manage their nervous system
2. It's developmentally appropriate behaviour for children his age to keep trying things even after you say no. This is cause and effect. It is something they learn through play. If they say or do something repeatedly they learn they can get a certain response from you.

What you should be doing is redirecting the behaviour to something more appropriate.

He likes pressing buttons on the tv remote, get him a toy version, he likes touching the tv because it makes marks, get him one of those cheap lcd drawing pads, if he likes throwing things and exploring gravity, play catch with him, if he liked putting things in his mouth that he shouldn't, get chew toys/foods of a similar texture and let him go wild with them. See where I'm coming from?

Children also learn to illicit emotional responses from us and no is an emotionally charged word. It's better to stay neutral and say we don't do X, let's do Y instead. "We don't lick batteries. Yucky. Let's lick ice lollies. Mmm yummy" "We don't touch the tv. Dangerous. Let's paint instead. Yay, how fun!" "We don't kick mummy. Ouch. Let's kick this ball to eachother. Yippee."

I have a 13 month old. I say "no, not for babies" and I remove him from the situation i.e. away from the stove or whatever and distract. It really does work. When we are somewhere new and he's trying to do something dangerous or whatever, I say the same thing and he stops and really hesitates. He's still interested but it's like he's waiting for me to remove it from him.

The key I find is consistency. Don't let him play with something and then say no. He won't get that. But if I say no from the start, it really works.

This.

And redirect.

You're very late to only just be starting to say no and to discipline.
You're getting to end up with a very naughty (feral) child if you don't start asap!