I have tried not to overwhelm my toddler with a barrage of rules at home. We have the basic "no jumping on the furniture" and "please use your inside voice" rules. As of late though, we have had to add some more specific ones:
1. Do not choke the baby.
2. Do not poke the baby.
3. Do not ride on the baby.
4. Do not use the baby as a hand-rail.
5. Do not put anything in the baby's mouth.
As you can tell all of these rules are for Tyler's benefit, since we like the kid and wish to see him live well into adulthood. Poor Claire feels heavily constrained by our new rules however, as they apparently severely dampen the fun in playing with her baby brother. Also, I am now forced to be ever so vigilant during the day as Claire seems intent on testing the limits of physical play with Tyler. It's one thing to make rules, but a completely different thing to actually enforce them!
For his part, Tyler is not completely defenseless against his sister's rough-housing. He is quite the accomplished hair-puller, and more than once I have had to go pry Claire's hair out of his steel-like grip. I'm not picking sides! But I do get a good chuckle when that happens...
No comments:
Post a Comment