Okay, today's question is Nikki from Australia. I have a 15-month-old boy that tends to whine or have a tantrum when I'm cooking, dinner, or doing certain tasks at home. From our observation, he may be potentially higher sensory seeking or high needs. This is a two-pronged question. How much healthy attention and playtime should we be dedicating? And what's age-appropriate corrective action to take now and into the future to reduce the whining as I cook or do other whole household tasks? I'm trying to be mindful as I want to create a healthy attachment now and into the future.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to a mini-episode of the Bratbusters Parenting Podcast. I'm Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach, mom, and grandmother.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Amy Bunnage, Lisa's daughter, and I handle the marketing and planning here at Bratbusters. Let's get into the episode.
Um, I think you're overthinking it. He's just a baby still. So I would just give him something else to do. Put it at the at your feet, bring out a basket, call it your kitchen basket. So whenever you need to do some cooking, you pull out this little basket that just has toys that he only sees while you're cooking. He has two choices. He can whine and grab onto you, which you just completely ignore, or he can play with the toys that you put down. You got to get the cooking done. He will eventually learn. Don't look at him and talk to him when he's whining and hanging on to him. You've already presented those toys, okay? So you've got the diversion. Because I say whenever they're doing something you don't like when they're babies, use diversion or redirection. The toys are right there. He hasn't seen those toys all day, okay? And you can check you can mix it up, have different baskets for different days so that you put that down now, put it right there. So he's got two choices. You might want to pick it up every so often and show him something, or just look at it yourself and say, ooh, what's this? So now he's learning that he's not going to get any attention by just grabbing onto you and whining all the time, okay, while you're trying to cook, or he can play with those toys. I think he'll make the right choice eventually, but you can't fix it in day one. This might take day seven or eight or ten.
I think that this brings up a bigger question is how much playtime do you dedicate per day? There is no set time. You know, you want to be talking to them a lot, but you also want to be interactive playing with them, but you also want to be able to get up and go and do stuff. I strongly recommend a toy rotation system. So you can basically be rotating his toys literally every single day, except the big stuff. Like if they have one of those big kitchens or a big doll house, you would leave that stuff out, okay? But it's all the other junk that you have laying around. Rotate those so that every single day he has something different to look at, okay? That is what will keep him entertained. They're not entertained by the same thing every single day. Plus, if you're if you're rotating all of those other, you know, smaller toys, he hasn't seen them for a while. It might have been a month or two. He's that much older. He'll play with it differently. It'll be like brand new again to him because they're forming so quickly, right? So yeah, give him something else to do rather than whining. Also, never when a child does independent play, and this a lot of people might disagree with me on this, but that's okay. Um, is when they are doing independent play, my son was really good at it. I still didn't completely ignore him, whereas a lot of people make the mistake of ignoring their kids when they're doing independent play. Then they feel, then they realize, wait a minute, I've been ignored all this time. So then they kind of almost build an aversion against it. So what I did was my kids were independent playing. Every so often I'd walk past doing the laundry or something. Oh, what are you doing there? I might stop for maybe 10 seconds. Ooh, let's look at that. Good job. And then I keep moving and they they tend to keep playing even longer and longer. And then I do sit down and play with them for a while too. But they learn pretty quick that mom's getting up, she's doing stuff, she'll check in. It's when they feel left alone for too long, is they tend to not like independent play after a while.
SPEAKER_01That makes sense because they know that that independent play just means that they're going to be.
SPEAKER_00Means they're going to be ignored for the next hour. As long as they're playing, they're going to be completely ignored, whereas I didn't do that with my kids.
SPEAKER_01So it's almost like rewarding them for the independent play.
SPEAKER_00Kind of, yeah. Yeah. And also I wanted them to know that I am interested in what they're doing, right? So or I might just be talking to them. Oh, what'd you go? Oh, good job. I see you did that. Oh, what's that? So, and then people say, well, when I do that, then they get all whiny and demanding. The better you get at this, the less demanding they are. Okay, but initially they're gonna go, oh, I forgot you were there, come and play with me. So initially they might be more demanding as a result of you talking to them while they're playing, but eventually they will learn and they'll be better at independent play. But you got to fill their cup up. You got to play with them for I don't know how long. I don't even want to put a time on it, but you do want to do a lot of playing with them, but you don't want to do it all the time because it's important for them to learn how to play on their own.
I think this time frame as well, when someone's transitioning from a baby to a toddler, that can be so confusing for parents, especially if it's their first child. And that's part of the reason why you created your toddler boot camp is there's just so many different scenarios that pop up. But how do you generally approach discipline as you're transitioning from this time period?
SPEAKER_00Okay, you're using diversion with a baby up to about 15 months, and then 16 months and to 35 months is toddler. That's when you're using consistent corrective action. So every time they do something naughty, you just say one word. You say no, and then you remove them from the fun or the fun from them. It might just be removing yourself, okay? So if they hit you, you just say no and then just meander off. Never look angry, frustrated, or disappointed. That's not leadership. It's just it's making them feel bad and it's never gonna work. But when they're babies, you're using diversion or redirection. So you say no, so you also say no, you just go no, and then you redirect them to something that you do want them to do. They will eventually learn. But it's sort of a gray area. Like you can maybe certain times you like if they hit with a toy and they're 16 months old or 15 months old, you might start using the consistent corrective action and take that toy away. Okay, but when they're and then uh same thing goes for if they're 16 months old and they've really had a bad day, um, you know, you know that they're overstimulated because they've been here and there and all over the place. You might want to use diversion with a toddler sometimes too. But I don't like to talk a lot about that because then people get confused. But sometimes you've got to make calls where there are exceptions. But generally the idea is zero to 15 months as babies. If they do do something that you don't want them to do, you just say one word gently, no, and then you redirect them. 16 months to 35 months, that's the consistent corrective actions, the toddler time.
SPEAKER_01And when you say meander off, I'm assuming that your body language, you're trying to be calm, not like you're storming away.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Don't look mad, just look like you're gonna go do the dishes or something. Meandering off. That's why I said it like that. You don't want to look angry. If you move fast, you look mad. Move slow, you don't look mad. How is that different from a timeout? Uh timeout is when you send them somewhere else. Okay, so it's I'm not sending them anywhere. I haven't said anything to them. I haven't said you go sit there. You're not I haven't said any of that. No. Okay, and I'm assuming you're close by within. Plus, they can come and follow me. That's okay. They can come with me, that's fine. But I've I've I've sent the message, ooh, I didn't like what you just did, so I'm gonna go, I'm gonna just gonna remove myself. And they can follow, that's fine.
Yeah, timeout is you go over there because you're not even worth talking to. I hate timeout, can't stand it. I think it's mean.
SPEAKER_01How do you really feel?
SPEAKER_00I hate it.
SPEAKER_01And then I think one last question I want to touch on is you know why you think about it this way.
SPEAKER_00What if you made a mistake at work and your boss said, You sit in a corner and think about what you did for the next 10 minutes. Think about how would you feel? Isn't that awful? That's what you're doing to your kids. They're human too, they feel the same way you would. It's demeaning, it makes them feel like garbage. They're sitting there feeling like crap. They're not thinking about what they did, they're thinking about they're worthless. They it just makes them feel horrible. You look at a kid's face sitting in timeout, it's miserable. That's what you're doing. You're making them feel like crap. I want to keep touching on that topic now.
SPEAKER_01Go ahead. I'm thinking that if you're I think some parents would approach that and think that they should feel bad for how they like let's say you put them in timeout for bad behavior. I
think some parents would approach that by saying that you they should feel bad.
SPEAKER_00No way. I don't want kids to feel bad. They can be mad that they got a consequence, okay? But I don't want a kid to feel bad. Like let's say I have an employee at work, okay, and they make a mistake, I don't want them to feel bad. I want them to learn from it. I would say something like if an employee made a mistake, I've of supervised adults. So let's say they make a mistake, I'd say, okay, so here's what you did wrong. So here's what we can do next time. Or do you have a better idea? You know, I try and bring them in on it. So there's I don't want them to feel bad. If you feel bad, you do bad. If you feel good, you do good. So if you make if your aim is to make them feel bad and ashamed of what they did, you're doing it wrong. That's horrible. That's the shaming, blaming, and bullying.
SPEAKER_01And I just want to touch on the last part of the question, which was how would you generally approach creating that healthy attachment?
SPEAKER_00Healthy attachment.
Play in their world, you always connect in their world. You don't always connect with what they're good at, you connect with what brings them joy. It might be two different things. If they're really good at kicking a ball, they might not like it, by the way. Some not all kids do. So, but let's say they're really talented at something. A lot of parents zero in on that. I don't. I zero in on what makes them giggle, what makes them feel good about themselves. So you zero in and spend time doing what makes them feel good about themselves. What do they have pride in? What brings them joy? What makes them laugh? What makes them giggle? That's how you connect. By the way, their love language is fun and play. Um, okay, is there anything else you want to add to this? No, I think I've ranted on quite enough. Okay. I think we'll end there then. Okay, thanks so much for joining us and back again soon talking about another parenting topic. Happy parenting.
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