My sweet baby girl who very frequently surprises us with new adorable little faces, or new words, or while driving in the car repeats "I love you," over and over again, has also just started some not so cute patterns of behavior that I hope do not stick around for long! One of them is that she just discovered a higher pitched scream that she love to pull out while we are driving in the car. Of course to get her to stop I attempted scolding her or giving her legs a little squeeze, but it would not really help out the situation. So, yesterday I decided to just ignore the behavior. I hoped that if she did not get a reaction from me then I would not be reinforcing the behavior and causing it to continue. Sure enough it helped. She did not completely stop screaming but she didn't do it as often or for as long, (I also got some earplugs in the car which just help to block out the high pitch's of her scream, but allows me to still focus on driving and not going mad, and still be aware of everything around me.) If you have a screamer perhaps you can try this technique and see if it helps.
The second and much more annoying habit that has been learned by my little angel is that she loves to push, shove and hit. The other day I was at story time at the library reading Rose a book when a little girl came over to hear the story. Before I knew it was going to happen Rose had pushed this little girl in the face hard enough for her to stick out her bottom lip and get teary eye'd. I felt so bad and somewhat like I am a bad Mom because I have not taught my 18 month old to get along with other kiddo's yet...but then again maybe all 18 month old children go through this phase and the parents each go through the mortification of trying to figure out how to fix the problem before you have enemies everywhere you go because your child is the mean one. We have tried time out (we put her in her crib for 1 1/2 minutes) but she tends to really enjoy her crib time and doesn't even cry, so time out is a happy place for her, and a happy place for me to have her be, when war breaks out between my angel daughter and her angel friends.
What are techniques you've done with your children to teach them the art of being kind to others?