Unconditional Parenting Support thread

[tillymama]

This thread is a safe place for those of us who have read the book and are trying to implement these ideas into our family lives.

It is also a place where people who are interested in the concept of Unconditional Parenting can find out more, and ask questions from those of us who use it day-to-day.

This is not a place to debate whether or not UP is the best thing since sliced bread, or a laughable concept. If you wish to debate, please start your own thread.

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Good starting points for people wanting to know what UP is all about:

The principles of UP
Alfie Kohn's website
Buy the book!

Thanks for your quick reply nappy, yes, I think an honest answer is better, but am also interested in what others have to say. In my situation today I'm pretty sure DS would have remembered and started asking again as soon as we got through the door, so it would just have been putting it off ...

A lot to think about there! Don't beat yourself up Scarlett! I also did a something I regret yesterday. I won't go into details because I know exactly where I went wrong but it's just a question of being a bit too stressed (we're moving!) and lacking patience.

Why don't you let him watch TV for a bit? It's not going to do any harm is it? It would have been much easier to use the walk home to chat about what he wanted to watch, discuss whether it was appropriate, how much time there would be for TV when you got home.

Sorry, you probably know that with hindsight. But one long term aim of UP is to bring up a child who is going to make their own decisions about things.

On the no/maybe question, I only say maybe if it is open to discussion. But sometimes I say no and then the children present arguments that makes it a yes.

Thanks for your reply, otherside. The reason I didn't just say yes to letting him watch TV was because of the way he suddenly and rudely demanded it; if he'd asked me nicely I'd definitely have considered it, though I also wouldn't want it to become a habit, TV after school every day. He just got into this "zone" of "I am GOING to watch TV!" etc ...

I know where you are coming from in that with DS the minute you do something one way, it becomes part of the routine. So if we do something that we don't want to become a habit, I always have to stress 'it's a special exception'. With TV we have talked about which nights it is possible (which because of different activities turns out to be only twice after school). Actually seeing as you had the plumber coming and weren't going to be particularly available, it seems having a special exception would have been ideal for everyone on this occasion!

I think it is quite significant that it was just as you were alone with him that he started speaking rudely. They are tired after school. Mine hold it in when I pick them up from the bus stop but as soon as we are out of earshot/sight of school, if there is some kind of problem, it shows in one way or another. There might be tears because they have hurt themselves in the playground but didn't want to cry at school. Or in DDs case, like your son, the minute things don't go her way, she gets aggressive. She also forgets about asking for things politely. If you are saying 'no' because of the way he asks rather than what he is asking for, you should give him a chance to ask politely.
If he can cope with a little gentle teasing, you can make a game out of it or just tell him plainly that you don't like to be spoken like that, can he please use different words/tone of voice.

"I wanted him to recognise and be upset at his shocking behaviour....I wanted our talk to have affected him in some way, you know?" I know, I've been there and no doubt will be there again but you'll see the effect in the long term, not immediately. I guess when you feel like that you just have to find some way of keeping yourself under control so you won't do anything your regret or counterproductive.

When he is totally out of control, have you tried coming up from behind and holding his arms to his side so that he can't kick or hit you? I am no expert on restraining techniques but this has worked for me in the past. Then I say something like ' I don't want to hold you like this, I'd rather cuddle you but I can't let you hit me/your brother/break the furniture. I'll let go when you tell me you I can trust you.'

HTH

Thank you, otherside! I really appreciate your thoughts.

Yes, he was definitely tired after school - it was his first day back after the holidays, he'd been ill last week and we'd just been to two playparks on the walk home with our friends, so in fact he was bloody knackered - I knew fine well the reason he was acting like this, but that still didn't equip me with the skills to deal with it all properly . I was going very easy on him and being pleasant with his stubbornness ... it was just when the hitting and kicking started at home that I got to the "what the hell do we do now?" stage.

Maybe I should have just gone with the TV ... it hadn't been in the plans, as DP was (unusually) at home so I thought the DC would have plenty of attention and no need to resort to the TV ... when I retrace my steps after a meltdown like this there's always something I should have done differently. Sigh, why is it so tricky, intellectually, to be one step ahead and anticipate all these situations?? Just when you master one scenario a new one presents itself ...

I have tried the restraint as you mention, but tbh he's strong and it's knackering.

but you'll see the effect in the long term, not immediately. God, I know this is true, and I just keep having to have faith! It's difficult, when a threat works immediately, but I know it'll just breed resentment and is not the way I want to bring up my kids. You're so right.

Hi Scarlett - just reading your post a few things suggest themselves to me... bearing in mind I have no experience of 6 year olds as mine are too small (and I had a hideous, hideous morning with DD so not exactly feeling confident in my own parenting skills...)

I would hazard a guess your DS isn't feeling listened to and hitting is the only thing he thinks you respond to. Therefore "hitting is right" because it works, in terms of getting a reaction. He seems to be trying other tactics to express himself before hitting, the dawdling etc are sort of ways of telling you he's not happy, and sure, sometimes/often you can't do/get what you want, but perhaps you could acknowledge his feelings so at least he feels you understand his frustrations, before he reaches a point where his frustration is boiling over into violence?

E.g when your DS said - "I want to watch TV when I get home!", could you have a) asked why - or find out if there is something on that he especially wants to watch?" (Are his friends talking about a specific programme and he's feeling excluded, perhaps?).

B) given a reason why he couldn't watch TV - "I know you want to watch TV but I'm sorry that we can't do that tonight/when we get home because . Perhaps he is feeling that the parental power is being wielded unfairly because he doesn't understand why he can't watch TV and it seems a bit arbitrary?

C) acknowledged his feelings, acknowledge that he can't do what he wants to and suggest alternatives? "I know you want to watch TV, it's frustrating isn't it, when you want to do things and you can't? I get frustrated that I can't when I get home but I have to , unfortunately there are things we have to do when sometimes we want to do other things. How about we watch a bit of TV later/play a game/suggest compromise or negotiation you as parent are happy with...

When he kept repeating himself and not crossing the road, instead of giving him more time to calm down, it's effectively giving him more time to brood on the unfairness of it all. Rather than getting it out of his system, it's simmering away. You say the only time you got confrontational was when you'd crossed the road, but I bet your son didn't experience the situation like that - for him it was a confrontation from the off. Could you/did you acknowledge he's cross, rather than playing with your phone and ignoring him? (Can you remember a disagreement you've had where the other person ignored you and what that felt like? It's quite a passive-aggressive thing to do, winds me up anyway, and your son is reacting to passive aggression with aggressive-aggression. Probably because kids of his age haven't sussed passive-aggression yet, so don't have those sorts of tools at their disposal...)

The rest of the journey home seems to be him trying to find a way to communicate his feelings to you in a way that gets you to acknowledge them, he's tried a variety of ineffective (and annoying) ways to connect with you on the issue but you're not engaging with him - from the outside the issue is less about the fact you won't let him watch TV, more that (putting myself in his shoes) you don't seem to care that he's upset that he can't. I think it is getting across that you do care that is at the root of the issue, which would hopefully then head off the violence.

Anyway, that's what I would have done differently. You say you sulked at him after his flippant sorry (when he didn't appear to acknowledge how you feel about the hitting etc), well he sulked at you all the way home (when you didn't appear to acknowledge how upset he was about the TV watching) - it's not that different, really.

"I wanted our talk to have affected him in some way, you know? But no." - he wanted his behaviour to affect you in some way, get the reaction he wanted out of you -of course he loves you, but when you say no TV and take the impenetrable hard-line, ignore him etc, he's experiencing that as love-withdrawal in the same way that you say "how can you love me if you hit me?" - "how can you love me if you ignore me/my desire to watch TV/don't care that I'm upset about it" do you see what I mean?

That would be my take on it anyway. And I could be miles out.

Funnily enough WildhoodChunder, I was thinking about this since my last post and came to the same conclusion about empathy.
Scareltt, have you read 'How to Talk so kids will listen'. The section on empathy is quite useful and the ideas in there are great when you need to get your children to comply which I unfortunately do more than I would like and I appreciate isn't very UP < WOHP with children who have a catch a bus disclaimer>

I was wondering if anyone could point out where I'm going glaringing wrong with DD1 as I'm a bit at a loss what I'm doing? The whole too close to see? Sorry as this is probably going to be long.

She's 2.8 and spreading her wings at the moment and insits on dressing herself which is fine in theory but never works in practise. This morning for example we were taking DD2 to the childminders and then DD1 and I were going swimming. This had been discussed and planned the night before (I have a notice bored with cut out pictures of various activities and just before bed we review what we've done and plan what to do tomorrow) but DD1 had announced at breakfast that she wanted to go to the playground. I said fine but that meant we have to get ready quickly so we could go to the playground on the way. She toddled off, choose her clothes, brought them through and went off to brush her teeth and wash her hands (I am currently not allowed to help with any of this). 10 mins later I reminded her that we were hurrying in order to go to the playground. Again 5 mins later I told her that we needed to leave before 9 am (she can do basic time ie big hand at 12, big hand at 3 etc) otherwise we wouldn't have time to go to the playground. Finally i told her gently that we had no time left to go the playground but she had to get dressed now as we couldn't be late for the childminder and she puddled all over the floor sobbing that 'mummy promised playground'. I mean I'd been warning her all morning? I gave her a hug and left her to calm down but finally I had to just dress her otherwise we would have been late for the childminder which understandable lead to a massive tantrum and rage. Luckily we were going swimming and she was able to get dressed herself after that otherwise she would have whinned all day about mean mummy.

this happens a lot with all sorts of things - decisions are agonising for her, i limit her choices at the moment as she is so little but even choosing between two breakfast cereals can lead to a meltdown. But mornings and getting ready are the worst! I don't want to just take over and hurry her out of the house and always leave plenty of time but i think 6 hrs would still not be enough :-) And there are times (early doctors appoitments, childminder, custody visits) when we have to leave at X time. Is there are way to do this without tears and tantrums? Or is she just too little to understand that having fun now (ie washing hands) means she won't be able to do what she wants later (i.e going to the playground)? Is there anyway I can help her to realise this?

Thanks

"Or is she just too little to understand that having fun now (ie washing hands) means she won't be able to do what she wants later (i.e going to the playground)?"

Probably!

And I have found that even when they understand that kind of thing, they still can't apply it at first because they live so much in the present.

Hello M&P! Would she allow you to be really engaged with her in getting ready even though you aren't allowed to help?

There can be a developmental stage for some children where it really helps them if the parent(s) go all Dora the Explorer on them.

"To get to playpark, what do we do first? Get dressed, wash hands, clean teeth and go outside and that's how we get to playpark. So that's... get dressed, wash hands, clean teeth, and go outside. Let's get dressed! Muy bien!" (rinse and repeat, with optional Boots the Monkey costume for the parent)

Not nagging, but playful and really engaged, and keeping the child engaged in what seems to be their priority. You might have to watch all of the stages and verbally tick them off as the child does them.

Or even make a visual plan for the child to follow and tick things off? But she might be too little for that.

thanks - ommward i would get told very firmly to go away because the bathroom is for private time if i tried to engage :-) It is the only time when she wants to be by herself, the rest of the time she is a limpet on my leg, but getting ready on the morning seems to be her quiet reflective time. I even overheard her doing 'breathing' this morning (i do yoga breathing when im ready to kill them) which was very sweet. I am very tempted by the Boots costume though.

Guess its just a case of helping her through till she figures it out. It about 18 years probably.

Hello everyone - I was wondering whether anyone could give me some tips on dealing with my 15 m.o. DS's frustration when he can't do something he wants to.

For example, we were in the doctor's waiting room today. He wanted to go outside the surgery door (which he could see from the waiting room) and walk on the pavement. He loves cars and always wants to walk to where they are. He also loves kerbs & steps, so his ideal place to play is right at the edge of the pavement by the road.

He walked me to the door, but was in floods and floods of tears when I wouldn't let him take me out, and I had difficulty calming him down.

I try to use How to Talk strategies - iidentify and empathise with his feelings, explain why I'm not letting him do what he wants, offer a next best solution (usually doing something similar later) and try to distract him. (He's not very easy to distract though - he knows his own mind. )

In this case it was something like 'You're upset because you want to go outside. It is frustrating, isn't it, when you can't go and see the cars. We need to stay inside because we need to be able to hear the doctor when he calls us. We'll go outside and see the cars after we've seen the doctor. Why don't you come and play with the toys?

He's only been walking about 6 weeks, and has only been walking outside the house for about a week. Most of that has been DH or me letting him potter around wherever he wants rather than trying to get him to go anywhere. He gets very upset when we do try to restrict his movements (eg not letting him walk into roads).

He usually gets upset when not allowed to do something he wants, but calms down quickly when I talk to him - but the last couple of days it's been much more traumatic for him.

He is teething (incisors) but I don't think that is the problem, and he wasn't tired or hungry. He's not working on a predictable mental development leap, although I'm wondering if he's working on a language spurt of his own as he's learning new words most days, and is showing separation anxiety / clingyness in the way he does when he's working on a mental leap.

Any thoughts?

Hi, this is actually an overdue reply chiefly to WildhoodChunder's post upthread. (See what I meant earlier about needing our own FB group, rather than just one big long thread ... it gets confusing! )

Anyway. Blimey, Wildhood, I think you're pretty spot on with what you said. Especially the reciprocal sulking - I do see where you're coming from. Thanks for taking the time to put all that down. I do try and acknowledge my DC's feelings if I can, eg they say "It's not fair" and I'll usually say something sympathetic like "No, it's not fair, is it? It's a shame you can't do xxx but we can always xxx instead." Or whatever. But something similar seemed to have escaped me on this occasion with DS.

With regard to the playing with phone and ignoring him, though, I would've thought that giving as little/no attention to the petulant, whiney way he was talking would've been the thing to do, no?

I don't know ... scenes like the one the other day that I described in so much painful detail (!) back a page or two are not terribly frequent, thankfully, and I really do feel that he was setting out to have a disagreement and nothing was going to stop him getting into the "zone" ... or do you think that's just not true, and there's always something I could do to turn him back into a smiley boy ...?

Otherside, I do have that book, but I've only really dipped in and out of it and skimmed the cartoons - I will go back and look at the part on empathy you're talking about, thanks.

AngelDog, I don't have any direct experience because I didn't read UP until my DCs were 4 and 2. But seeing as no-one else has responded, here's my tuppence-worth.
It sounds to me like you are talking too much for such a small child. Next time could you say less and rather than say 'why don't you come and play with the toys', actually play with the toys yourself? It's embarrassing in public but it's usually quite effective.

But you say he's not very easy to distract, if he is really stubborn about what he wants and it can't be done, then I guess all you can do is accept his anger and frustration.

Hi Angeldog - I agree with Otherside, I think the explanation you're giving is probably a bit too complex for a 15mo. If he likes cars, could you take some cars with you to play with? Or is there something else you could distract him with, I know you say he's hard to distract but the "Oh look, what's that?!" method used to work with DD, point at something and say "is it a beetle?" as that's what she's interested in, she'd then inspect it and tell me it was dust or whatever. Or making it into a song used to work. Embarrassing in public to ad lib a song about whatever it is he wants to do but used to work for me.(The tune of Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is very useful for "This is the way we... wait for the doctor/look at the cars/play with the toys" etc). Or looking at the cars and talking about them. "What cars can we see from here? I can see a red one! Auntie Sue has a red one doesn't she? What do you think she's doing today?"

Separate post to Scarlett coming up...

Right, hello again Scarlett! :)

I don't have a 6 year old so I don't know, but I would think that giving no attention to the whining could be felt as "love-withdrawal" in the UP sense, could you perhaps focus attention instead on something positive or different? So you're not giving attention to the negative behaviour, but you are giving him attention? Something like "It was really good the other day when we got home quickly, do you think we can do that today?" perhaps? Or "You seem a bit down today. Did you not have a very good day at school?" (Or is that patronising for a 6 year old? Ideally the latter question would be phrased open-ended so he couldn't get away with a yes/no answer.) Or perhaps you could say "It's hard to understand you when you whine, can you talk to me in a different way please?" to try and change the behaviour?

I know what you mean that sometimes it seems they're just in the mood for a fight, with DD I usually try and work out whether she's tired/hungry/coming down with something but at 2 I have a fairly good idea of what's going on in her world, once she hits school then there are so many other things that come into play that I won't be able to second-guess. Perhaps you could ask your DS how his day was, as per above if he'd tell you, so you could get to the bottom of where the mood arose? (Although with DD asking her is pointless as she's not mature enough at 2 to be aware or able to tell me, I don't know if 6 year olds can.) I usually find with DD if we've had a showdown then I can think back to it after the event and work out what happened and plan what to do differently next time, but hindsight is wonderful! And there's no guarantee that a different approach would have had a different outcome, I just try different things to see what works. Everyone has bad days though, so I guess as long as they're few and far things are going okay!

Thanks, Otherside & Wildhood - I'll try talking less (always a challenge for me ).

DS was much easier today. And when he's not, I need to remember that single-mindedness can be a really good character trait in the right circumstances. :)

Scarlett - you've had really good advice already but I just wanted to add my thoughts :)

On the saying no - I would guess there were several reasons why you said no. The first as you mentioned was his tone of voice. If you think about it, this is quite conditional - ie you only get what you ask for if you ask in a nice way, if you make the mistake of asking in a not-nice way, that's it, privileges revoked, no second chance. I'm not 100% sure about a six year old's development or understanding, but could you say something like "DS, I don't like being ordered around. If you could try to ask me in a more respectful way then I will think about what you've asked." (In more 6-yo friendly language!) - you're still not engaging with the behaviour you don't like, but at the same time stating your expectations. (When you do say something like this be prepared for it to be said back to you at some point - so pick something you wouldn't mind hearing from your own 6 year old's mouth as a reminder to speak nicely!) Then if/when he does ask you nicely, you can still say no if you feel it necessary - so it's slightly different from saying "No" and he then thinks about it and asks nicely, so you feel obliged to say yes.

Other points I'll be back on as I can't think clearly. Been a long day :)

On the facebook group issue, personally I'm not keen as I much prefer having these kinds of discussions on an open forum, but equally I wouldn't like an open forum on facebook specifically, just because it's the kind of thing which is too hard and draining to have to explain over and over to RL people who think UP means being "soft" or having no boundaries at all. But that's JMO - please go ahead and make it if people want one. I just don't think I'd use it. :)

Scarlett,

I agree with all the advice that has been given so far. I just wanted to ask that for me with my 5 year old, the most important thing at all points to avoid escalation is ALWAYS to provide a solution which the child can pick which avoids them losing face. They MUST be able to get out of every situation without losing their pride. Reading your story I see several points where your ds had to lose face.
The other day I was standing with my two at a busy crossroad. We had just crossed the road at the traffic light crossing and my dd (5) wanted to cross back over again and ride her scooter a way up the other side of the road and then cross where there is no crossing. Well, I explained to her that I could understand that the other side of the road was better for scooter riding (smoother - it is!) but the road is really busy and we must cross at the crossing. She had a melt down (we had a hard shopping trip behind us and were both fraught) and said she wouldn´t go home unless she could go the way she wanted. I sat down at the side of the road and said I wasn´t going to go the way which meant crossing without the crossing. We both sat there for a while which gave me time to think (while ds (2) picked poisonous berries from nearby bushes - aargghh). I then said that since she didn´t want to go my way and I didn´t want to go her way, what about us going a different way altogether - much further but with a smoother pavement surface and no roads to cross. She really leapt at the solution. She desperately needed me to reach out to her and find a way out of the situation which she had got herself into where she could see no way out without losing her pride. She is too small to be able to.
I think with your son, at each moment where you are in conflict, if you could suggest a solution (or brainstorm with him to - just often I´m too tired for that in the heat of the moment) where he can keep his pride and not "give in", it might make life much easier as then the conflict can come to an end. A conflict where one party loses is much harder to get over...

Sorry: I just wanted to ADD - not ask!

AngelDog - I just wanted to say quickly (which turned into a long ramble as usual :)) before I go that 15mo is a really tricky age for this in general. They want to be independent, but they just don't have the judgement yet to be able to deal with that independence. The HTT strategies aren't really very helpful until they have a lot more verbal understanding.

What I found helpful with DS at that age was giving him as much independence as possible where I could, so making time each day to go somewhere where I could let him walk freely without worrying he might hurt himself badly. So the park, our local children's centre was a godsend, friends' houses, soft play. Luckily it was around this time of year so the park was where we spent most of our days. I was really influenced by the book the Continuum Concept at the time, and also Letting Go as Children Grow, retrospectively had similar messages, basically - let them take risks, within reason (some people manage without stairgates and I never could - the mental image of him falling down an entire flight of stairs was too awful) but things like, I let him climb up on his own to the slide. If he wanted to go on the slide meant for bigger children, I let him try, but I didn't help him. If he can't get up there in the first place then he probably isn't ready for it yet. He actually has a very good sense of danger now with 'natural' dangers e.g. drops on the side of climbing frames, walking over uneven surfaces, slippery surfaces, steep surfaces - faced with a hill, he'll choose to crawl down backwards, still. If they do hurt themselves, of course comfort them as you would normally, but don't then whisk them away when they go straight back to do it again. If you watch, they are much more cautious the second time, and test out different ways of doing things until they are confident they can do it safely, they rarely make the same mistake twice, unless you deny them the opportunity to do that straight away. (NB, I am willing to accept I might be being a smug "Well it worked for me" parent, because with DS it happened exactly as the books said, whereas I've read threads on here and seen with friends' children that some of them just don't seem to have the same inbuilt sense of danger.)

Then with big dangers, roads, deep water, substantial drops, he was in the pushchair and that was non-negotiable until I felt I could trust his judgement more. Once I was confident he could walk well, I would always let him walk if we had time in places where there are no roads, so fields, parks, etc. And lots of "This way, DS, shall we go to see the ducks? They're over here." and I can't remember if he just always listened and followed, but he seemed not to mind being told where to go when he had the freedom at other times. Perhaps it helped though that at the time he learned to walk he was also extremely anxious about being left behind and would not go out of my sight, ever. But anyway, once he was fairly good at walking in roughly the right direction, I started to let him walk when we were by quiet roads, where I could hear a car coming from far away. Once we got to a busy road he had to go into the pushchair, even if he was upset by it. As he's got older I've been able to develop this into letting him walk by medium-busy roads, as long as he walks on the right side of me and stays close. He doesn't always hold hands but this doesn't matter because I make him walk far enough away from the road that I can easily grab him if he was to run off. This obviously only works if you only have one DC to concentrate on and you don't have a bolter :)

Sorry Scarlet, I´m obviously too tired for writing. I just reread what you´d written and realised what I´ve just written is totally unhelpful. I think what Wildhood has written is MUCH more helpful. I guess an idea (which I probably wouldn´t have had at the time) would have been, when he said "I´m not going home until I can watch tv" to say something like: "well, I´m not going home at all! I´m going back to where we were stood when you just said you were going to watch tv and I´m going to start talking about it all again as if I hadn´t said anything" or "well, I´m not going home at all, I´m going to sit on that bench over there and we can talk about why you want to watch tv all of a sudden" or even something really silly "I´m not going at all, I´m going to go to a big shop full of tvs - where there are twenty or thirty tvs and I´m going to watch ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME" - if I got even the start of a smile, I would start talking about those shops which have a wall of tvs all with the same programme and if there´s a picture of a dog on the tv, the big tv shows the dog REALLY UNBELIEVABLY BIG so I would get scared of this monster dog, whilst the littlest mini tv shows the dog so that it looks like a mouse and you just can´t believe that that tiny little thing is a dog at all...
Sometimes that sort of silliness does work with us.

And oh why not I might as well reply to M&P now too

I have a similar problem with DS (2.6) where he wants to walk to the childminder's in the morning, which takes 3 times as long as it does if he's in the buggy. I say "Okay, if you want to walk, we have to get ready really quickly, or it will be too late." And he skips off upstairs to get ready, all excited about being able to walk. But then he can't decide which t shirt to wear, and he won't let me choose one for him. Or he decides he doesn't want his nappy changed, so he refuses to lie down. Or he suddenly notices his train track and decides he has to play trains right now. Or (usually) all 3. This is standard behaviour when he is rushed, and why I usually leave at least an hour to get him ready if I can. I try keeping reminding him that he wanted to walk, but it doesn't work. Eventually he's ready, but it's too late to walk, so I say "Sorry, it's too late. You have to sit in the pushchair." and predictably, he melts down, although lately he's taken to just accepting this and saying "Oh. Too late." but I don't know if that will last.

Today I managed to compromise by saying he could walk to the end of our street and do the rest in the buggy - on other days I've just said it's too late now, but you can walk on the way home. Would that be an option? Could you do the park on the way home instead? Or perhaps if you already had an activity planned, say "Okay, but if we go to the playground we won't have time to go swimming." but if you said she finds decisions hard that might be a bit much for her. What about saying "Well, we are going swimming today, but we can go to the playground tomorrow. Let's put it on the board now." Or how about some kind of physical game on the way to the childminder's - like skipping, or having a race? If she normally walks could you get her to go in a pushchair or on a scooter or something to speed up the journey?

Angeldog as you know my ds is about a month younger than yours and is also loving the big wide world of walking at the moment. so i feel your pain...roads, other peoples gardens and car doors etc are all frustrating for him. I sometimes find something really physical can be a great distraction eg a raspberry on his neck, chucking him up in the air or such. I too do all the talking, but as we said on another thread lately, more in training for my self than cause it helps him at the moment. The physical sensations seem to grab his attention better than showing him things etc. But maybe that's just him.

And remember that we do try and let them do everything we can. But it's simply not in our power to disable a car alarm, make getting knocked down not hurt or reclaim a neighbours garden. So we don't need to feel bad, even though the lo's don't undertand why we have to be so frustrating. [busmile]

oh and angeldog sitting ds on my shoulders/head works brilliantly...i save it for when we have to leave and he won't understand why. It won.t work forever but i can't see anything non up about it (age appropriateness considered etc)...but maybe others know better [rookie emoticon]