How To Choose Your Battles With Your Toddlers

There is a time when you just feel like throwing a straight NO to your kids for something they want to do badly.

As a parent, we all face those heat up moments with our kids. We try to control them and want them to do stuff according to our desire.

If you’re a parent, till now you must have known that you can never make your baby a key doll. They’ll do what they want to do. But sometimes, their rebelling behavior can be a major concern for us. As it may affect their discipline.

Here is my story of how I started deciding my battles for my little one.

It was a magazine until our two years old shredded it by hand. I have been a co-parent for 63072000 seconds and counting. In this duration, my husband and I have learned a lot.

One of the learnings is to choose our battle with our toddler. As parents, we have accepted, we cannot fight all the battles against our toddler. Winning them was a question for later. We decided we will pick the important ones.

How to identify those, I hear you ask?

Well, we don’t have a step by step process for that. You just know. 

We realized we learned how to parent while parenting. It’s like one of those on the job training. We decided this particular battle was not worth fighting.

• There were many reasons for this decision. 
• The magazine was an unimportant item. 
• Tearing it was fun for our toddler. 
• He remained focused on this activity. 
• We got the break we needed. 
• Shredding the magazine helped his fine motor skills. 
• It strengthened the muscles in his hand.

When To Leave The Battle

As I said there is no fixed theory on how to choose your battles with your toddlers. But, you can understand when to leave the battle understanding the behavior of your kid. Here are 3 reasons why we decided to leave the magazine battle with our kid. You can remember these points when you’re high with your temper.

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1. No Logical Reason To Stop

We assessed there was no logical reason to deny him and manage a meltdown instead. The mess later was indeed a difficult task to clean. But believe me, that was a better option than handling an avoidable meltdown by a toddler.

2. “No” Is Not Always A Disrespect

As parents, we take defiance from our kids as disrespect.  A hit to our ego is intolerable. Parents tend to have a sense of ownership of their kids. A toddler does not plan intentional disrespect to her or his parents. It’s fun for them to say No to everything.

3. Harmless Crazy Fun Is Fine

They are busy exploring new avenues to communicate. There is no reason to restrict a child from having harmless fun, even if it is at the expense of a magazine.

For older kids, try to understand the reason behind the disobedience.

Take Away

It is easy to deny or restrict a child. Kids emulate what they see around themselves. We need to introspect on our own behavior sometimes. We could very well be the cause of our own problem. 

So to all the parents, don’t be so hard on yourself or your child. Let go of that protocol of being a perfect parent. Allow your kid to play without fear. Acknowledge the good stuff you are doing as a family.

Celebrate the achievements and milestones in parenting. So, start today by giving a pat to yourself.

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