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Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
How to get my 13th month to not stand/run on the couch?
My 13 month old climbs well, but once up on chairs, couch, etc, she insists on running on them. She doesn't really get that she can fall and get hurt. I've done some research, and read Happiest Toddler on the Block. Only thing I can glean from it might be the clap-growl technique. When she climbs up, and stands on the couch, I'm to clap and in a low, growling voice say no stand, no run.
Has anyone tried this? And/or, has anyone tried anything else and had success? I know that she knows what sit means, but she thinks it's really fun to stand and run.
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Re: How to get my 13th month to not stand/run on the couch?
Mine went through a stage where they were alwyas jumping on my couches & the more I tried to stop, the more they wanted to do it. I read HTOTB too and could never get into that growling thing.
I started 123 magic when they were older, maybe 18 months or so and eventually (it takes awhile) it worked & I also let up a little and let them get up there a little as long as it was safe & they weren't at risk of falling off/hurting themselves. 13 months is tough though, I think redirection is prob hte only way to go at that age & being consistent abou tit.
Same here.. and I have twins. They were absolutely making me crazy with fear when they did this. Finally I just had to let them up there. Sure they fell a few time and cried.. but I'm lucky .. so far no one has got hurt. They still like to do this everyonce in a while, but they're much more stable. Mostly they just sit up on the couch now. GL!
Re-direction and consistency. DD does the same thing. I tell her to sit on her bum every.single.time. If she doesn't do it, she gets down from the couch.
Rinse, repeat.
This. The best thing at this age is consistency and re-direction. This isn't a problem with DD yet, but with DS I would simply say no and make him sit down. If he continued standing back up, I would just put him on the floor. Just like in the bathtub, every time DD stands up I just sit her back down and say we sit in the tub. She hasn't stop completely, but she has gotten better.
Identify the bad behavior immediately ("DD, running on the couch is not ok; you could fall from height and hit your head"**), end it (by picking her up from the couch and putting her down on the floor), and give her an opportunity to display the desired behavior in an appropriate way ("If you want to run, you can throw a ball down the hall and try to beat it to the end.") Wash, rinse, repeat; repeat it 50 times a day if you have to. All with no excess emotion (oh, sure, show that you're displeased, but big deep breaths when she does it for the 12th time and don't get flustered), and very, very, VERY boringly repeated.
While I think that there are lots of good ideas about discipline from lots of people I've heard from (here on this board, in real life, in books, etc.), I think that a lot of them ignore a basic tenet of behavior modification techniques: maintaining a proper success to failure ratio. Basically, just saying what is wrong and "correcting" the bad behavior doesn't tell the child how to act appropriately. And give them a chance to succeed at that. Of course, we have to take into consideration what is age-appropriate (sitting nicely for an hour isn't!) and what our little ones like to do (such as, in your case, climbing).
This last part can be hard to do - it may mean stopping some other task that you're doing to come up with a creative, in-the-moment solution. But it's so worth it!