Reply to Failing marshmallow experiment. Advent calendar is a special kind of torture

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is so cute to imagine her little mouth stuffed with sweet, gooey marshmallows. She's confident she'll get more marshmallows later. Maybe she's so intelligent she understands the stakes are low and just wants to enjoy herself. That's a wonderful trait! Consider yourself lucky she has experienced food scarcity or other real hardships.[/quote]

Cute is one word to describe it. We do think she’s cute sometimes. But there are a few more words to describe it that are not as positive. [b]She’s greedy! She’s gluttonous! She’s ungrateful![/b] And when we say no she whines and cries which is very irritating.

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She is FOUR. You characterizing her this way, even in your own heads, is a really dumb and bad move. Stop it. Stop appraising her character and get in there and parent the four year old you have, by which I mean: put constraints on the situation that enable success.

In this case that means put the dang calendar away between opening the doors. Engage with her on the success: "Larla, you're playing with your dolls now. What is going on in Doll Town today?"

You need a teenager who has self-control. But the way you get a teenager with self-control is not by exposing your four-year-old to tests demanding lots of self control, watching her fail them, and developing a negative storyline about her. It's by giving her opportunities to do the right thing and then giving her rewards, in the form of your attention and engagement, for the behavior you want, and not for the behavior you don't want.[/quote]

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