positive discipline and clever diversions

If you have been living with a little person for a while you probably figured out by now that they are natural copycats. They try to imitate everything they see us do. Lately Bud has been showing a lot of interest in keys and opening doors. He would rummage around my purse to look for keys, bring it to the door and try to put it in the keyhole. Of course he can tell the play keys from the real keys - just like with everything else. Even if we buy them plastic laptops they still insist on tinkering with our real laptops. Sigh!

As much as possible I try to practice positive discipline. I try to avoid using the word "NO" as much as I can and reserve it only for times when I want to stress a point. I'm afraid that saying it too much would make Bud NO-deaf, as some experts so aptly coined it. Instead, I tell him what he CAN do.

This morning as P was about to leave for work, Bud was clinging on to him insisting on playing with the door knob again. He was holding the house key and wanted to put it in the keyhole. I had to look for diversion, quick! Good thing we haven't thrown out the box of our newly purchased file cabinet. I pierced a hole on the image of the lock and showed Bud that he can instert the key there. Bud was super happy with his new cardboard file cabinet. Instant new toy. Success!