I don’t know where I’ve heard or read about this, so I’m not trying to take the credit here; instead, I’m trying to explain our approach on this.
From practical experience with our two boys, distracting them from doing something ahead of time is much more beneficial than suffering the consequences of letting a situation brew.
For instance: Nappy changing is a nightmare at the best of times when these kids are strong enough to mimic a crocodile rolling over to kill it’s food. But if there’s a poo-filled nappy involved and the kiddo decides to roll onto their fronts, instead of lying calmly and patiently on their backs like they do on the TV, there’s then another angle to the problem that I’ll leave you to ponder upon. Rather than allow our boys to get up to no-good during this very frequent, surgical-like, procedure we try our best to distract them, by getting them to do something or look at something to get them thinking otherwise. Such things could be, trying to find the fire engine on the big poster stuck on the opposing wall. Or the digger that is part of the lamp shade. “Where’s your hair?” tactics, basically, anything that will interest them into concentrating on something other than death-rolls, making the poo-nappy situation a little easier to deal with.
This works in other walks of life too. We’ve subconsciously been doing this in the car too, to alleviate boredom during our travels, such as trying to find the tractors on the fields, or point out buses, police cars, big lorries, and so on.
The dog. Ah, the dog. Many-a-time during a tantrum or crying session, we’ll say to the boys (particularly when they were young), “Ssh, can you hear Alfie barking? Quick, lets go and find him!” and it suddenly gives them something different to think about, other than the situation at hand.
Another example, is that we’ve still got 6”x4” photos of vehicles and animals around the room in the kitchen, ready for when Oliver is beginning to flag in terms of eating. At any time, we can get him to find the lorry, the double-decker bus or even the pig – this gives us something to give him to think about, such that we can keep his head still long enough to shovel more food in.
There’s even a tactfully placed helicopter photograph stuck to the ceiling, directly above where the high-chair is, for those emergencies when you need the physiology of the human body to help out and physically ease off the muscles of the face that’s force-holding a jaw closed, such that a spoon fits nicely into their mouths. (100% my idea that! Patent pending.)
It’s amazing how distracting them ahead of a problem is so much easier to deal with, rather than trying to get them back from the brink of a major disaster.
