Anyways, kids are people. Try different things.
I read something speculating that a major contributor to Americans' general disbelief that family members are usually very similar to one another is that most of their exposure to "family members" is actually to the members of fictional families on television who are played by unrelated actors.
(I know you're making an observation about how clear the differences between your children are. But I submit that if you compare them to a few unrelated children, you'll find that they are indeed very similar to each other overall.)
We have a lot of public pronouncements about what children, or people generally, are like, but almost all of it is completely uninformed by facts or experience.
There's a really surprising amount of resistance to the idea that an effective way to work with one person might be counterproductive when working with a different person.
Children need grounding. "I need to win arguments with my own kids" is a vanity, that gives up a lot of the ground kids need for growing up.
If you take the time to explain the situation to the child you often don't need to convince them anymore. And if you can't explain - should you really have your way?
A foundation of trust has to be built up, and that can take years, in some cases, especially if your child feels that you have a long pattern of not taking them seriously or caring about what they think or feel.
This is not true. It doesn’t work for meltdowns caused by not buying them a toy, not giving them ice cream at bed time, etc.
I hope I don't come across as rude, this is just something I feel very strongly about. Once you see how differently the kids behave if you treat them with respect it is difficult to be quiet about it. :-)
Not being understood is one of many frustrations children have and it’s very rarely the cause with my friends that diligently practiced gentle parenting that heavily involved acknowledging emotions and desires but still resulted in meltdowns because KIDS ARE SELFISH. There is a reason “sharing” is a school that has to be taught.
I don't think we will reach an agreement here, so let's just leave it at this. Wish you all the best!
I have a toddler now, and have tried this approach a number of times. She just says "no" to the choices....
Yes, "no" can be petulant, but it's also could be deeply beautiful and true.
You can try many other things, and maybe you’ll find something that works some of the time.
“What do you want?” can be “NOTHING!”, can be something. “You want this, but the reality is this and that. How can we deal with that?”
If kid is upset it usually helps to validate their feelings first.
Also, my kids are not yours, so take this with the grain of salt as well.
Through persistence and speaking to him calmly, he eventually stopped his petulance. Usually if he wanted something, we would only give in after repeated conversations. We wanted to explore decision making with him and ensure he would not quickly want something else. The main thing I wanted was for him to talk and explain why he wanted something so bad.
I believe he only threw a full tantrum a handful of times. When that happened we followed the advice of pretending to leave without him. When he realized we were not rewarding his tantrum, he stopped.
In short, we wanted to reward him for communicating not for throwing a tantrum.
Not always appropriate but very useful in many situations. And if used proactively, possibly limit episode occurrence when not under your control.
There’s some things you simply cannot do, and nothing else can be done about it. You have to learn the lesson that sometimes you lose a conflict and that’s it. You don’t get anything else. Sucks? Yea welcome to life.