Toddlers & Changing minds

becki777

Caleb is (rather annoyingly) into changing his mind all.the.time. One minute he wants milk, I get it then he says "I don't want it." If I put it away, he says "I wanted it!." He always has an attitude and a whine about his responses too. This happens with everything - when I ask him to help with something, one minute he agrees the next he doesn't. 

I'm trying to explain to him he can't change his mind OR have an attitude about it, but its not clicking. Somehow I don't think timeout is an appropriate consequence....it has no effect on him for this. Anyone else's toddlers do this? How do you handle it? 

ACK! Toddlers can drive you insane!  

raceyrae

Natalie started doing this around Caleb's age and is just now starting to get better about it.  We just give her an option and she has to choose between A and B.  She can change her mind once but that's it, after that she only gets the last choice she said.  With helping with something, we don't give her the option to decide whether she wants to help or not, it's more please help me pick up and if she doesn't than, it's either I need you to help pick this up or you won't get to do X.  We do a lot of asking her to use her big girl voice to explain what she wants/doesn't want without whining.  If she's whining, I tell her I don't understand her while she's whining and she needs to calm down to explain it to me better before I'll answer her concern.  Hope this helps.  I find this stage to be really trying, more so than the newborn stage!

AngelPack

raceyrae:

Natalie started doing this around Caleb's age and is just now starting to get better about it.  We just give her an option and she has to choose between A and B.  She can change her mind once but that's it, after that she only gets the last choice she said.  With helping with something, we don't give her the option to decide whether she wants to help or not, it's more please help me pick up and if she doesn't than, it's either I need you to help pick this up or you won't get to do X.  We do a lot of asking her to use her big girl voice to explain what she wants/doesn't want without whining.  If she's whining, I tell her I don't understand her while she's whining and she needs to calm down to explain it to me better before I'll answer her concern.  Hope this helps.  I find this stage to be really trying, more so than the newborn stage!

We sort of do this too.  He gets a lot of say but if he keeps changing his mind we narrow it.  This or this.  The end.  Also, limit choices because when there are too many it is harder to make a decision and stick with it.  When it is just milk or no milk I would give him one more chance.  Milk or no milk? Ok, lets move on now.  Sometimes I will just do the easiest thing for me which in this instance would be to pour the milk anyway and say it is sitting right here if you want it and if you don't - well I didn't pour enough that throwing it out would matter   Basically we are just short and sweet and we don't go back and forth a lot.