WHY was I such a smartass posting this thread?? Why?? In the past 48 hours, suddenly Juliet has started to test the boundaries at every given opportunity. I swear she's looking straight at me, then doing something like throwing the remote off the sofa or throwing a book across the room. In fact, a lot of it involves throwing! She's also stropping out at everything taken off her or if she's removed from a situation?!! What happened so suddenly?! I was feeling so so good about having achieved something and now I'm thinking already 'where did I go wrong?' lol!
I'm not mega worried, it's just I feel like my blood pressure has gone from relaxed to super mega heightened stress/frustration in about 10 seconds and I can suddenly clearly see how parents lose their temper with their little ones. Twice I have had to catch myself before I over-reacted as I felt like really shouting to try to get the message across. That's upset me because it's not her fault and I've seen how easy it was to react totally irrationally.
Anyways, just had to post this as can't believe the turnaround and can I just say this is the LAST time I am ever going to post a thread showing off and saying how good Juliet has been!!!!!!!!!!!
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I feel really proud of Juliet because in the past couple of weeks, she has gone from being really quite mischievous and ignoring 'no' and 'Juliet don't do that' and 'careful' and still touching Larry's cat food, water bowl, the fire, plug sockets etc to now really responding to 'no' immediately and literally turning on her heel and rushing away.
It's like she's clocked that there is a danger or that something like Larry's dinner area is not an acceptable area for her to interfere in. She still tries it on with things like cupboards, rubbish bin (loves the click open, click shut thing and can see why it must be confusing when I am constantly clicking open and shut myself!) but I feel really chuffed that she is not trying to seek my attention by probing these dangerous areas and I feel even more chuffed because I have achieved it my OWN way and I have not raised my voice but simply used a more serious sounding tone to my voice. When this has failed, I physically remove her immediately from the area (but never roughly or with any force, always just very matter of fact picking up) and placed her back down on the ground facing away from offending area, down to her level with a reminder that 'Remember that is Larry's dinner, it's not your dinner so you need to leave it for Larry'. I know it sounds lame but I feel like I've achieved something

Juliet is very cheeky and often mischievious and I did worry that my less forceful approach might not be successful but I've stuck to consistent firm but gentle reproaches that I feel are age appropriate and I don't shout or lose control (have wanted to at times after she tries to climb up pushchair to pull radio cord and radio on top of her sigggghhh!!!!) We've now taken fireguard down and I thought she'd be all over the hearth, hands in fire etc but within a day or two, we've had no bother whatsoever and man, the lounge looks so much nicer!!
Anyways, yay me! How's your LO's coming on with understanding what you're trying to teach them?>
[Modified by: Lizzie77 on 14 January 2010 09:38:12 ]