Since the last months we start actual conversations with our little nearly-two year old girl.
An important parenting lesson for me personally is that I can rethink everything to improve communication quality.
“nohoo, you can’t pull anything out of the dishwasher baby, I am putting stuff in!”
Turns into
“Yay, good work baby! Those spoons you just picked up are indeed dirty: if you help daddy and put them back in, they will become clean!”
And
“no babe, you can’t have lemonade, you need to drink your milk”
Turns into
“if you finish the whole glass of milk, you can have lemonade!” (But then she’s full and of course doesn’t even think about lemonade).
Using the energy of the other and funneling that in the right direction with positive energy, as most parenting skills, is not only a great parenting skill.