Handling "I could!" from my 20-mo

[trillian11]

One of our son's latest things seems to be realizing things he "could" do, and I'm not always sure how to handle it. Sometimes he gets really upset when my response is something like, "Yes, but Mommy can't let you do that, so no."

Like -- we're at the table eating breakfast and he's holding his water glass and he goes, "I could." I say, "You could what?" and he explains, "I could spill." In this case, I said yeah, you could spill, but maybe you shouldn't...it would make a mess we'd have to clean up. So of course he dumps his water onto his tray. I said, "So what do we need to do?" "Clean up," and he wiped up the water with a towel.

But then it goes into I could spill this red soup on the white carpet, I could spill my milk, when I ask him to please stop scratching me while he's nursing, he says, "I could", etc... I've tried explaining the difference between "could" and "should" in terms of whether we should touch the spider or centipede we've found stuck in the bathtub, and that seemed to make sense to him, but most times he doesn't seem to get the difference. Anyone else been here?

Carey

[sapphire_chan]

Sounds like he's having fun with language and power. My inclination at this point would be to say something like "X stays in the glass" and "hold the glass upright" and move to help him hold the glass correctly if he starts to spill.

Same thing for other "I could do this messy thing", try telling him what Should happen and tell him a way to help what should happen happen.

And give him chances to do spilling activities. Such as if you need to clean the floor have him pour water from a cup onto the floor to start the mopping process, and have him water plants. And at 20 months and as verbal as he seems to be, he could probably handle a Montessori-style pouring activity.

Let me know how any of that works, so I can use it in half a year.

[trillian11]

Yeah, I think you're right about language and power!

He does respond generally pretty well to those types of things -- like "water needs to stay in the sink, or the floor will get slippery and we might fall." He just seems to be so verbal that I veer toward trying to explain the difference between "could" and "should" and thinking about the reasons why you might choose to do something, and am probably overcomplicating the issue for his age.

My folks got him the Learning Tower for Christmas, and it rules -- he can totally safely participate in kitchen activities now, and loves it. He stands at the sink and pours, helped me make gingerbread cookies over the holidays, and tonight was a total partner in making pizza dough. It really tickles him just right.

And it's funny you mention the Montessori thing; I just recently started reading about it, and it's really clicked, at least the idea of encouraging your kid to do what they're capable of as soon as they're ready for it and paying attention to the "sensitive periods" or whatever that's called. Awhile ago he started playing with our socks and trying to put them on so I moved his clothes down into the drawers he could reach and made labels on them with clipart. He gets such a kick every day out of picking out his playclothes and knowing which drawer they're in, and putting them on as best he can. He's even totally into the routine of ok, my jammies have yogurt and milk on them so they go into the hamper.