No On No

We don't say "No" much to Opal. Or "Don't". Or "Stop". Or that's the theory, anyway. To be honest, now that she's a preschooler, and we can get away with all sorts of sloppy parenting and omitted steps, we haul them out fairly often. She's always been a child who does best with clear, firm boundaries, and they can be easy ways to set them.

But when the chips are down and the parenting is hard we have to be much more careful. That described most of her toddlerhood. And that included avoiding negatives.

Avoiding "No" gets a lot of bad press and mocking statements, but let me assure you, I'm not a wishy-washy person who lets my kid run wild and who believes words are magic. I didn't skip them because I thought they would induce negative vibrations; I had no illusions that avoiding saying "No" to her would keep her from doing it herself; and I wasn't worried about hurting her delicate little psyche. (Opal is not a particularly delicate child.)

So why did we avoid "No"? Because it wasn't effective at producing the outcome we wanted, which was a kid who was following the rules with a minimum of hassle on everybody's part.

First and foremost, just saying "No", or "Stop that", or "Don't" leaves the child to figure out what you want them to stop doing. Their perception may not be the same as yours. Sure, trial and error will narrow it down, but that's no fun for anybody. Do you really want to wait around while the child figures out that this "No!" means "garbage stays in the garbage can"? Because testing that means making sure you mean all pieces of garbage, not just that one there, and that you mean it stays in the can, not just out of the child's mouth, and, and, and...

Even if you're clear about what you're trying to prevent, a negative leaves the child to figure out what to do instead. If they were good at that, they wouldn't have been doing something wrong in the first place.

Furthermore, every time you say "Don't touch the trash can" you're helping the child think about touching the trash can, and not helping the child think about anything else.

Sample monologue from when I was learning this lesson: "Don't bang the spoon on your plate." "Don't bang the spoon on the table." "Don't bang the spoon on your glass. Just don't bang the spoon." "Don't drag your spoon over the table." "Spoons are for eating. Eat with the spoon or put it down." (Ah! Peace at last! Oh wait, she has a fork. Time to teach her what "cutlery" means.)

There are people who say that small children don't understand the negative in "Don't do XXX". I don't really believe this. But I do know, for a fact, that a child who's not paying attention often misses the beginning of a sentence, and that small children have many things to pay attention to other than adult utterances. This was demonstrated to me with great clarity when a well-meaning friend saw that my daughter was waving around barbecue-sauce covered hands, and said "Don't put your hands on Mom's jacket." Opal looked at him in mild puzzlement, and reached out and planted both palms firmly against my sleeve. You could practically see her think "OK, if you say so, but it seems like an odd thing for you to want."

I also know that people have a strong, visceral reaction to words like "No". Want proof? Watch an adult struggle to maintain composure when a toddler says "No!" The adult will normally be mad even if the kid actually is being compliant, and just saying "No!" for effect. (Toddlers do this a lot. Always wait to see what they're going to do.)

Kids don't like being told "No" any more than adults do, so positive wording often creates less angst. There is no practical difference between "No, you may not have a cookie now, wait until dessert" and "Yes, you may have a cookie for dessert", but one of them is apt to provoke screaming from the first word, and the other one will probably postpone it at least until the end of the sentence if not indefinitely.

Taken together, this means that my experience with negative rules is that they don't work, they often produce the opposite of the desired effect, and they tick off my child in the process. Thinking of positive alternatives is more trouble in the moment, but usually pays off within minutes.