Retired pediatrician Dr. Cathryn Tobin shows how turning requests into games makes discipline easier. Instead of escalating when a child resists, meet them in play: make a doorknob talk, let shoes search for feet. The limit stays the same, but compliance becomes fun and cooperative.
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Welcome to Toddlers Made Easy, where there's no fluff, just practical, big-hearted parenting strategies to help you calmly manage all those crazy awesome parenting moments. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Dr. Cathryn, a recently retired pediatrician with more than 40 years of experience. I'm the author of 3 parenting books, the founder of Healthiest Baby, And most importantly, the mom of 4 amazing adult kids. And then there's Smudge, my great big golden doodle who thinks he's a lap dog. Today, let me show you one of the easiest ways I know to get a young child's cooperation without getting loud or overwhelmed. 3-year-old Jamie loved looking at her face in the doorknob. It was one of her most successful stalling techniques. Let's go home and bake cupcakes, her mom tried. Should we use blueberries or chocolate chips? Well, Jamie didn't budge. Instead, she tightened her grip on the doorknob. And after a few more attempts, her dad said, okay, Jamie, we're leaving now. And he pretended to leave. Well, Jamie just ignored him. He asked again nicely, and then finally he raised his voice. Enough! I call this the calm-calm-explode cycle. We play it cool, we ask nicely, maybe we even validate feelings or explain things, And perhaps another approach or two. And when nothing works, eventually we blow. But you know, there's a much easier way to get a little kid to leave or to listen to you or to cooperate. In fact, Jamie was giving her parents a clue about what might help. Do you know what it was? It's the doorknob. She wanted to play. And playfulness is one of the most underused but most effective discipline tools we have with young kids. When we need our kids to do something, especially when they're resisting us, our instinct is often to get more serious or to get louder or to put more pressure. We repeat ourselves, our voice gets firmer, we explain why they need to listen, and if they still don't cooperate, we assume we need to increase the pressure. But young kids live in the world of play. Sometimes the easiest way to get their cooperation is to meet them there. So for instance, Jamie's dad could have crouched down beside her and looked into the doorknob and said, whoa, look at my nose. What happened to my face? And after they'd played a moment or two, he'd say, come on, let's see what our faces look like in the car window. Now, would that work every time? Probably not. But playfulness can make a hard transition so much easier because you're approaching your child in a way that speaks to them. Now notice what hasn't changed. Jamie still has to leave. The limit is exactly the same. Being playful doesn't mean you stopped being the parent. It doesn't mean Jamie gets to hang onto the doorknob until she decides she's ready to go home. You're still holding the limit. You're simply changing the route you take to get there. And I think that distinction is really important. We tend to assume that when a child isn't cooperating, we need more authority to be harsher. And sometimes what we actually need is just a better way of reaching our kids. A 3-year-old may have very little interest in your schedule, your explanation, or the fact that you've already asked 4 times. But make the shoes talk? Now you've got their attention. Maybe the shoes are looking for someone's feet. Maybe they accidentally ended up on your hands. Maybe you whisper, I don't think these shoes know where they're supposed to go. You haven't changed what needs to happen. The shoes still need to go on. You've just found a way into cooperation that makes sense to a young kid. And play gets their attention in a way another explanation often won't. It can take some of the friction out of the transition. It lets you stay connected while still expecting your child to do something they don't want to do. And frankly, acting a little childish once in a while may actually lower your stress level. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do I have to turn every single thing into a game? Well, no, you don't. Sometimes you're tired. Sometimes your child's tired. Sometimes nobody has the energy to make the pajamas sing. And sometimes you need to just pick up a screaming child and leave Target. Playfulness is a tool, and it's a very useful tool to have available before you get to yelling. So what does being playful actually look like? When I was practicing pediatrics, I used play all the time, especially when kids were afraid of having their ears checked or getting their throat examined, or sometimes even just walking into the office. I took play so seriously that I designed my office to feel more like a child's world than a doctor's office. Before you even stepped inside my office, you were greeted by the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland on the front door. That was intentional. I knew I was going to ask kids to do hard things that they didn't necessarily want to do. Sit up here. Open your mouth. Let me look in your ear. Hold still for a moment. I could have simply repeated the instruction, But if I could get a child playing with me first or turn the request itself into a game, I had a much better chance of getting their cooperation without upsetting them. Maybe the otoscope needed to examine Teddy's ear first. Let's take a look in Teddy's ear, okay? Oh, Teddy's done. Now it's your turn. That worked so many times. Maybe I act baffled about where their ears have gone. Wait a minute, you had ears when you came in here. Where did they go? The child who had been backing away from me a minute earlier might suddenly be laughing and pointing to their ears. I still needed to examine them. The child still needed to do something they might not want to do, but I didn't necessarily need to put more pressure on them to make that happen. I needed a way of reaching them. And that's the part I think we sometimes miss when we talk about discipline. We focus so much on the behavior we want that that we forget to think about the route we're taking to get there. We want the shoes on, we want your child to go to the car, we want them to stop pulling the dog's tail, we want them to go to bed. And yes, those things need to happen, but how we get there matters too. Playfulness just gives us another route and a really effective one. It lets us keep the expectation without automatically escalating the interaction. It lets us say, In effect, yes, this still has to happen and I'm going to help you do it in a way you can manage. Sometimes that will mean being playful and sometimes it will mean being kind and firm. Sometimes your child will be so tired, overwhelmed, or upset that play isn't going to work. The point is that play is the answer to almost every discipline problem. Resistance doesn't always mean we need to become firmer or louder or more serious. Sometimes we just need a better way of reaching a child, and with young kids, play is often one of the best ways in. Because ending unwanted behaviour or getting our kids to do something is only part of the equation. We also need to think about how we get the behaviours we want to see. The limit matters, the behaviour matters, but so does the child standing in front of us. We're not just trying to get a pair of shoes on. Or get out the door or make it through bedtime. We're raising a little person. Thank you for listening today. Keep up the good work, and I'll see you next week. Bye.
