What to do about your Child’s endless NO's?

The term used for your child’s continuous “NO” answers is "toddler refusal", the reason they say “no” is because it’s easy to say and they can.” Susanne Denham, professor of developmental psychology at George Mason University and author of Emotional Development in Young Children, states “They feel like they need to keep on exercising it.”

This condition can suddenly appear and can keep the parents troubled over the new actions their toddlers are having. This condition can disappear as it first appeared. Mike Lynd, a father expressing his experience with his daughter Meredith, states "One day Meredith opened her mouth, and instead of 'No,' out came 'Mmmmmmm I don't know.' And that was the end of it." The solution to the word no is to try to teach your child to imitate your words, and by that start experimenting strategies that include copying.

   5 steps to resolve this problem:

         1. Offer choices:

The perfect way to solve your problem is to limit the choices for your toddler or child. Examples on that would be, "Do you want to wear the white shoes or the red shoes today?" or "Do you want juice or milk? “also, "Okay, time to choose! Do you want to put away your blocks or your stuffed animals?". Giving your toddler only two choices will minimize the answer of No. you can use this technique on almost every question. In case the technique doesn’t work then you can still use it but in a stiffer way such as, "I'm going to count to ten and then you choose, or I'll choose for you." Your child will probably understand the firmness once you start the countdown. But you should keep this technique as a final solution because using it a lot would make it loose its power.

2. Offer the appearance of options:

Turn things into humor. Give her a choice and add humor to it, such as "Do you want to put your sweater on frontward or backward?" You know she won’t put it on backwards so basically you are breaking the tension of giving orders. But at the end she still thinks she has a choice. In order of this technique to work, you should think of two major facts, first you obviously know more than your child, and second it’s by default that anything can be flipped into a choice.

3. Teach your toddler other responses:

As we earlier said toddlers or children usually don’t know many words and the easiest is “no”. In order to help your child in expanding their vocabulary you can play a game with them. An example would be "What's the opposite of 'no'. Another example can be, “What comes in between 'no' and 'yes'?" (Maybe, perhaps, and possibly.). Also, "What's a nicer way to say 'no'?" ("No, thank you.".

4. Use "no" sparingly:

Your toddler or child might have heard the word “no” to him/her from you a lot, so if that’s the reason then try to stop it and use other synonyms of it. Be specific in your synonyms to the situation. An example, "It's not safe to play on the stairs, let's play with your blocks instead, “or "We don't hit the kitty," also, "Use your indoor voice, please."

5. Stand your ground:

Sometimes you will need to do things with a firm way and give orders, an example would be when your child stops in the streets and stops moving, your direct reaction would be to move her quickly. But safety shouldn’t be the only reason of being firm with your child. It's ok if sometimes you tell your child "This is not a time when I can give you a choice. There's no choosing now. I know that you don't like this, and I'm sorry, but this is the way it's going to be." You might even answer with, "Because I’m the mommy, that's why.".