Not easily distracted

[47jennifer]

DS is 13 months. He's very curious and into everything...which is generally okay. Obviously, there are times he manages to get into something he shouldn't have. I try to stay positive and redirect him, and bring him to something else. But lately he is so hard to distract! He'll try to go back to whatever it is I've stopped him from doing, and if I try to move him away and play something else, he'll throw himself on the floor, crying (do tantrums really start this young!?!).

I don't know what to do in these situations. I just keep trying with different toys/activities and sometimes nursing, but I'm getting frustrated and so is he! From what I've seen, other kids seem to do much better with being redirected. Does anyone have any tips or advice?

[sarahdavida]

I´m not sure if this is great dvice, but our DS has also always been very tenacious and not easily led away from something he wants to do. He is also highly curious and when he finds an activity or object he likes, his interest is very focused and intense. This started around then the more independently mobile he became.

What we did was to try to make sure that he could not come into contact with anything we really didn´t want him to access in the first place. We have a moderate sized apt., so it was not too, too difficult. All the picture frames, glass, decorative things went way up high. We were not babyproofing freaks, but just made sure if there was something we really didn´t want him to touch, he wouldn´t be able to touch it.

I also had to think really hard about what I really didn´t want him to get into. If he tore apart a drawer of clothes, ripped a book apart or broke a CD case, I felt I needed to be reasonable and let a lot of things go. If there was a book or object that was truly valuable to us, we would move it out of reach. Bathroom doors stayed shut and we would try to always give him something he was happy with in the kitchen so he wouldn´t go for anything else.

Of course, it wasn´t perfect, but I found the more we could do to prevent the situation in the first place, the better.

Good luck!

[just_lily]

Totally normal.

DD couldn't be effectively redirected until about 18 months or so. Now at 22 months it is still pretty hit and miss. I ended up having to put a lot of things away or out of reach. I blocked my kitchen off entirely, my book shelves don't have anything on the bottom two shelves (I have a seperate shelf with kid books low down), and my mantle and any other high spot is covered with stuff I don't want little fingers into. A lot of things got moved into our bedroom as well. It was the only thing that saved my sanity.

An MDC mama once said on here that one-year-olds are like ants. All over and into everything. That really stuck with me because it is completely true!!