This is super long, so thanks if you're taking the time to read it. I'm a WAHM. I watch my son during the day and work in the evenings. I'm hitting a couple of roadblocks with my fourteen month old, and I could really use some advice from senior parents. There's so much parenting literature for babies and toddlers, but I feel 12-18 months is this vague transitional period, where it's difficult for me to find a discipline strategy that works.I was raised in a household of inconsistent discipline and harsh corporeal punishment. To gain an understanding of functional discipline, I've read virtually every parenting book on the market. When he was a baby, I found myself favoring RIE principles. I still hold to a few of them now that he's transitioning into toddlerhood, such as allowing him freedom to explore his environment without a lot of arbitrary rules, telling him the things I'm going to do before I do them, and explaining to him why I'm doing things that he doesn't like. But RIE discipline is just not working for us. He's an extremely stubborn and persistent child, two traits which I find quite admirable, but make disciplining a nightmare. He understands the word "no" and the hand sign for "stop" but he views these as a game, sort of a Red Light, Green Light. As soon as I stop saying no or signing stop, he resumes whatever bad or potentially dangerous activity he was doing. No matter how many times I calmly tell him "I don't want you to do that" and attempt to redirect him, he remains fixed on his original goal.Example: He loves turning things on and off, and his favorite thing to turn on and off is the Xbox. Recently, he did it 8 times in the span of 10 minutes, despite me repeatedly telling him to stop and taking him away from the game system. I would put him down by his toy box and attempt to play with him. He would laugh like it was a game, feign interest in his toys for a moment, and then he would get right back up and 'race' to the game system to turn it on. Not once during this did I laugh, smile, or do anything to convey that I thought what he was doing was cute or amusing, and it wasn't until about the fifth or sixth time that I started to lose my cool, raise my voice, and scowl (none of which helped, btw).Generally, when he repeatedly gets into something he shouldn't, I remove the temptation by putting it beyond his reach or in another room altogether. He's obsessed with cats, and he used to sneak away to stick his head in the cat house to talk to them, and no matter how many times they hissed and ultimately scratched him, he would go right back to sticking his head in until we finally had to zone our house--one area for cat-loving baby, one area for baby-hating cats. But this is something I want to stand my ground on. I believe that he's capable of not messing with the xbox, I just don't know how to get to that point with the discipline strategies I'm currently employing. I've attempted ignoring his interest in the xbox--that also doesn't work because it makes a sound and lights up when he turns it on and off, and that interests him. I've also attempted time outs, though I'm admittedly a bit hazy on the time out protocol, and basically just made him sit in his empty pack and play for two minutes each time he turned the xbox off. He was very upset and cried a lot, but when I let him back out, he immediately resumed the behavior.I'm really at a loss here. Is there something I could be doing better or differently, or are my expectations simply unrealistic for his age? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2djNwAO
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