Is a 1yo old enough to undertand good and bad behaviour?

[MissPenteuth]

My 1yo DD is a bit of a handful at times and until fairly recently I always thought she was too little to be capable of being 'naughty', but now I'm wondering if she's old enough that I can start trying to correct her behaviour a bit. Not with punishment obviously, but as an example, when she tries to turn over and crawl off the changing mat, I turn her back and tell her she has to stay still. When she spits out her food I tell her sternly not to do it, because it's bad. Am I being ridiculous? I'm really not sure. She's still so small in so many ways, just a baby, but they have to start to learn sometime.

I think at 1yr they start to understand that they have control over what they do, so they can appear to be naughty on purpose when actually they are just exercising their own will, just because they can. I think it is just a phase of learning, and it sounds like your DD is a bright little girl. I have found with my DD that the best way to deal with it is to acknowledge that it is her choice, but explain what the consequenses are, e.g. "If you bang your toy on the glass table again then the toy will be taken off you and you won't have it to play with" then follow through. It takes a while for the penny to drop (mine is 19 months now and most of the time knows what she is not allowed to do) and even then sometimes they relapse it seems just to wind you up ;-) My DD has moved on to the stage where she laughs at me when I issue the consequences talk, and it is so hard to keep a straight face, but I still follow through. It has led to the odd tantrum recently, but I don't let that stop me following through as I believe consistentcy is key. Seems to be working overall I'd say

I asked a similar q about my 19month old last week in "parenting" and was told he is too little to be naughty. Not sure I agree. I think from about a year its worth starting using "no" and maybe removing whatever it is they are misusing etc but they won't understand any more than that yet. My DS is starting to have tantrums now if he can't have what he wants - usually I ignore him and he stops but thats about as far as we've gone so far.

I read a great explanation of babies' apparent 'naughtiness' (you know where they deliberately do something you've told them not to, and look at you while they do it) that they are doing a scientific experiment on you: they are fascinated by the fact that what you want appears to be different from what they want (eg ds2 thinks it is great to drop things into the toilet, but I seem to have a problem with it!) so they are repeating the action again and again to see if it always results in that reaction from you - like, 'wow, not only does dropping something in the toilet make a nice splash, it also makes Mummy shout 'No!''

I think it's good to not think in terms of good and bad behaviour at that age, but a sharp 'no' will sometimes get their attention so it will appear to work. Normally distraction will be more effective though.
However, it's hard to suddenly switch from letting them do something to not letting them do it, so it's fine to have boundaries from early on; you just don't need to interpret it as naughtiness.

Thanks for the replies. I know she's not really being 'naughty', but I suppose I have to start setting boundaries sometime. And I shoud make sure DH is on the same page, so that we're consistent in what we tell her she shouldn't do, and what we let slide (the recent ear-piercing shrieks, for example, I think are best just ignored).

I agree its not about being good or naughty but you can still try and shape their behaviour into something preferable.
I started saying No to things around 12 months but i sounded like a broken record and hated it. Then a montessori nursery worker suggested that i tell DS what i do want him to do rather than what i didn't. Eg: please keep your feet on the floor, rather than No don't climb. It felt so much more positive and DS responded well. We also introduce the naughty step at 14 months for things we absolutely didn't want DS to do, like touching the lap tops or hitting. Loads of MN threads say 14 months is too young for naughty steps but it worked a treat with our DS and we only had to use it about twice with the laptops and he's never touched them since (now 17 months old). So i think they can learn "good" behaviour from a really young age.