I knew you all would come through, there are probably ten things I haven’t tried yet! Will report back.
@Lithe i love the fake dog idea… right now toddler is way more into dog than dog is into him, so that sounds like another good way to channel those urges.
We also switched to a wagon which made life so much easier. Probably not worth it for 2 weeks but something to consider long term for kids who don’t like strollers
Unfortunately this is a reactive dog driven limitation: I need to have about 80% of my attention on the dog for safety, so I can’t have a toddler transportation method that allows for toddler escapes or wandering. There isn’t a good walk route near me that would be toddler wandering friendly + reactive dog friendly.
I feel like this people have never talked to a toddler. They have zero reasoning skills.
My youngest likes to play make believe games. So I tell her things like the fairies are coming and you will only be safe in your bed(she takes forever to get into bed at night). We make it silly and she is way more cooperative!
Does your toddler still fit in a stroller footmuff? Ours is warm enough for our climate that he can wear whatever underneath, so we don’t have to change before we go. On super windy days I also use the stroller rain cover.
I use muscle 
sometimes combined with made-up urgent adventures or investigations at the park (mine likes to look for trash trucks or busses). My toddler seems very happy as soon as we get 50 feet from the house, so I feel ok about strong-arming through the transition resistance in our case.
Oh, and also: “because Dingo has to pee and poop at the park! Can he pee on the floor? No!” gets some giggles from the potty joke crowd right now. Whatever works…
Taking notes as Chickadee gets bigger and more mobile…
I will say, obviously this is a common issue based on responses AND my kid is uniquely not on board with it. I hang out with four other two-year-olds on a frequent basis and he is the worst about clothes + containers with straps by a really wide margin. So hopefully Chickadee will be more cooperative and you won’t have to think this hard about it!
Chickadee is a pretty sweet and cooperative baby but she also loves a wiggle. But generally – gonna keep tricks up my sleeve as much as I can!
Reporting back on the walks! Strategies were not tested for walks for uninteresting scheduling reasons. I’ve been using them for other areas of life and the response is either no + crying, or no + running away. This is very helpful bc it confirms that we are in a hard phase, not that it’s something I’m doing.
This phase will end, I do think my kid will grow up to be a Colorado Man who shovels snow in shorts and a t-shirt (assuming there is enough snow to shovel in 20 years?), we persevere.
How did you and any partners in parenting/childcare decide on/work out a discipline strategy? What is it? What resources, if any did you access?
[odds in your favour.gif]
Love you it’ll be okay it’s just all bullshit.
I’m gonna circle back to this because it’s gonna take a while ha ha.
Oh, I will start, though by saying, a super productive conversation, for both of us was to talk about how we were disciplined, expectations as kids, and what we thought did or didn’t work for us in our siblings under those systems.
When you figure it out, let me know. Ugh
I like Janet Lansbury’s podcast; it’s not specifically about discipline but more about what small kids need from their parents.
Having the convo with a spouse is tough. One time my husband put our 2-year-old in “time out” and when I found out about it I was very mad. Maybe I should have gone in time out. We have not figured it out yet.
I would personally love to be in time out
I just wanna have a modicum of a plan when things go bad!!! Rather than flight freeze lol
We’re still figuring this out bc Spore is a Rule Follower so I think we got a freebie with him, and TR is a work in progress aka piece of work.
I don’t think we have an overarching strategy so much as growing together as different challenges come up. Like @Bracken_Joy said, comparing notes on our own experiences growing up and how much we did /did not want to carry forward was a good starting point.
My spouse tends to do better with paper books than social media/videos, so we got a printed version of How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen as a framework for discussion and we found that we mostly did agree with its approach. It has lots of helpful little scripts for different situations.
He is also pretty good at making observations about the kids’ responses or emotional skills when we have some downtime together here and there, and we have short conversations about it. I think that’s when we have breakthroughs or progress - rarely in the heat of the moment.
My timeout is the naughty step so I absolutely put myself there and have let the kids put me there.
They have also sent me straight to bed or straight to bath, which again, love it.
Oh yeah I forgot, this book is super helpful. Still tough when you get thrown for a loop.