Toddler Tricks - 87: Do "Things"

Problem: You have a plan for the afternoon, or for the next day, or for the next five minutes. You tell your children about it, in great detail. They either set their heels in, determined not to do the activities you've laid out, or they are so excited about it that they will not do what they need to accomplish before the fun begins. For example, yesterday the girls needed to go down for a nap, then they were going to eat an orange. They were so excited about the orange (and they don't even like oranges!) that they could hardly sleep for the promise of it. Same goes for holidays, swimming, visits, TV shows...anything basically.

Solution: Keep it vague. Very vague. The girls need to know that there is a structure to the day and that we will be doing fun things, but they can't contain their excitement over even the mundane and their impatience exceeds their desire to do the necessary steps to get to fun things.

So, when they ask me right before a meal or right before nap time what it is we are going to do next, I answer, "things. Fun things. Lots of fun things. I'll tell you after you ____." It works a little better. Just a bandage fix until they have more capacity for time passage.


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