9 Ways You Can Try to Change a Child’s NO Into Yes
Plus a desperate, tenth way that I don’t like but rarely use.
There are many stages in a child’s evolution, but the one that is most likely to grow a parent's gray hair is the NO stage. That, along with the WHY stage, but the NO (with variations of NO WAY and NOT IN A MILLION YEARS) is by far the most exasperating one.
I’ve talked about the reasons why children say no even when they feel like saying yes right here, so I have to add. Next to the too small (the child), too vague (the request), too tired/uninterested (again, the child), the decision to not cooperate may have to do with the need to express some form of autonomy.
Truth to be told, sometimes (read most of the time) we can’t afford to sit there and meditate on the child’s reasonings. We want to make him meet us halfway (preferably our half of the way) and just do what we need him to do. For those situations, I have a list of potential approaches that I like to tick, in this particular order. I’ll get to it in a minute, but first…
A Scenario
Let’s say we’re meeting some friends at their house and we’re expected to be there at a certain hour. Mathew (two years and eight months old) knows about it, we’ve been talking about the visit for a couple of days.
