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<div>Originally Posted by <strong>JayGee</strong> <a href="/community/forum/post/15381642"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/community/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a></div>
<div style="font-style:italic;">If I say nothing, she'll think it's okay.</div>
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Why will she think it's Okay? Haven't you told her before that it's not okay?<br><br>
Of course you have told her, and I disagree respectfully with your assertion.<br><br>
She's probably irritated hearing the same thing over and over again. We parents tend to act like our kids cannot hear us. They might SEEM like they don't hear us, but they hear us. And maybe she wants to work it out on her own....to see what others do....to let the consequences to her behaviors happen naturally (and learn that way, too) rather than to hear the same words again from Mom. Kids hate to have their intelligence insulted. My son gets real mad when I do that to him (by repeating something I have already told him way too many times. I am SO guilty of repetition!!)<br><br>
I am not picking on you. I used to repeat the same old stuff over & over too, until someone clued me in how annoying that was.

I had seriously not ever thought of it before.<br><br>
Sometimes kids can be inconvenient and/or embarrassing in social situations while they are learning the finer points of interpersonal relationships. It's hard for us to sit there feeling like the bad mama in front of the other mamas. But the kids learn a lot from each other. Like when they don't share. It's more than about pleasing or not pleasing mommy. It makes kids not want to play with them. And you will be BLESSED if your DD is playing with kids who will say so to her face. Because kids teach each other. It will matter, at some point, that no one likes it when she's grabby. And if mom's not intervening (and is peacefully watching from the sidelines, no doubt grimacing in discomfort of course), then maybe a playmate will get the chance to tell DS to her face, hey cut it out--I hate it when you do that. But sometimes we can tend to cut off that natural process by our intervention.<br><br>
I read a whole bunch of John Holt's stuff about how children learn and he got across to me a point that I will never forget. I mean, the general idea of it....since I have already forgotten the exact words. haha The idea being that we don't TEACH kids. Kids LEARN. (note the difference about who is doing the DOING in those two sentences?)<br><br>
In other words, they want to learn, they desperately NEED to learn in order to navigate the big wide world, they are biologically MADE to learn, grasp and process what they need to know. And what doesn't help so much is when we teach AT them, which sort of insults their intelligence.<br><br>
I am NOT saying you do this. I am just free-form brainstorming here, thinking of how wonderful it was to read this way of thinking for the first time. It helps me give my kid SO much more credit than I used to.