The jig is up!

The most challenging part about parenting Megan is always questioning whether she comprehends what we are telling her to do.  Well, the jig is up.  We (Will and I both) have felt for a very long time that she understands everything we say.  It has always seemed that way to us.  I question it when no matter how many times you correct her she doesn't stop a behavior; I typically fell like an ogre after butting heads with her and always go to the "what if she doesn't understand me, what if I am wrong" guilt trip.

I am not saying I won't find myself on that guilt trip again, BUT I now have some pretty concrete evidence that she is understanding and she is just choosing to ignore or fight, etc unless she is properly motivated (like everything else).

Yesterday afternoon she managed to get completely undressed when she woke up from her nap.  I went up to put her clothes back on her so that she wouldn't take her diaper off and she was so happy and loving that I didn't want to put her back down for the rest of her nap time so I got her up.  I sat her beside me on the couch and put the iPad in her lap.  I told her that if she took her glasses off I would take it away from her; she gets really excited and pulls her glasses down when she is playing with it.

So, she played for a good 10 minutes before she touched her glasses.  When she pulled them down, I grabbed the iPad, locked the screen to get the music to stop and put it on the other side of me.  She started complaining and I said "mommy said if you didn't have your glasses on you couldn't have it".  She immediately started looking around at the floor in front of her and looking on the couch for her glasses.  I touched them to show her where they were and she yanked them off her head and put them back on correctly and then said "mor" to get the iPad back.  I told her that was a good job and gave it back to her.  And then I thought....what the heck!   She clearly understood what was necessary to get it back.  About 10 minutes later she pulled her glasses down again (she reached up to take them off a few times before then and stopped herself).  I didn't say a word, but reached over to take the iPad and she immediately put the glasses back on and said "mor" before I could even get it away from her.

Her goose is cooked. She was motivated to do what I said, even motivated to do it the second time without instruction, so she obeyed.  Motivated!  If only there was a way to motivate her to obey every time, or at least some of the time with other things like not throwing toys/food, or not grabbing Sam's hair, etc.  We can't tackle everything at once, that wouldn't be fair; but we are going to start standing our ground one behavior at a time because I know she understands.