I have a 2 yr old than doesn't talk yet and i am having trouble finding a disciplinary that works. help??

My 2 yr old only knows the word 'no', so i know that he understands what it means, but he refuses to obey by it. he will test your limits and b/c i have been living with my parents for tha past two months, it has been very fustrating. he thinks it's a game sometimes and others...well i don't know. i try spanking (not hard enough to hurt), repeating words like "no", "stop", "don't do that". i am always nice at first (unless it is extreme), then i make my voice more stern and parental. i'm not really his best friend, that may sound bad but i read that it is a mistake to be your child's best friend. i think the problem is with his grandparents...let me explain: for 7 wks, luka was here in KY with my husband's parents (at the time he wanted a divorce and i was a week from delivering our second child) and they let him get away with alot of things. i came back and was the bad mommy. i tried to ask them to respect my rules, but it was no use. what should i do???

Answers:
I'm a young father of a two year old boy. So believe me when I tell you this is normal behavior for our children. I'm not your typical lazy dad, before my son was born I checked out books from the library, read all the little pamphlets that they give you at the doctors office, and did a whole lot of searching the web so that I can be ready for my little guy. I also can relate because I too live with my parents for personal reasons, and it can be tough at this stage.

As far as the grand parents are concerned you and your husband should sit with his parents and discuss the things that your comfertable with and set bounderies as far as you wanting the way you want to raise YOUR child. Before you do that make sure you and your husband are on the same page though. Grandparnts always want you to succed as a parent, so they feel the need to intervine all the time. It can be annoying but in their own way they mean well. Hope this advice helps.

Now for your child, children at the age of two have so much emotion thats why this stage of thier lives is called the terriable twos. It can be frustrating for him/her because they cant comunicate to you and they dont know yet how to controle all these new feelings. This should lessen the more they get to talk and begin to understand things more differntly. What I find that helps us is time out. The reason being is when you spank a chid they feel like they can do it back, and that can be diffocult to try and stop.

A genarel rule of thumb for time out is how ever old the child is should translate to who many minutes you have them in time out. For example my son is two so I'll have him in tim out for two minutes. When you put them in time out let them know what they did wrong and explain that if they dont keep on doing what they did wrong then they dont have to be in time out. This way they can relax and calm down. After every time out I tell my son that I love him and that Im not doing it to be mean, and I also remind him what he did wrong and tell him not to do it again, and then give him a kiss and let him play again. Hope this helps, but remember every child is differnt and if this doesnt work. Just keep on trying other ways until you find something that works. Good luck.

Sorry if there are any miss spellings I dont have time to proof read this.

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All two-year olds test limits -- a firm no, followed by distraction with something else works best for us.

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