Thursday, April 9, 2009

No, No, No!!!

Sometime in the last week Joseph has come to believe that when we say "no", the appropriate response is to shake his head no. Now, he doesn't know that the actual appropriate response would be to stop misbehaving. In fact, he just continues with the behavior while shaking his head no. We caught his head shaking on video. He wasn't actually doing anything we wanted him to stop doing on the video...this was completely staged for our reader's entertainment. He's doing a lot of shaking at the beginning but loses interest when he spots a cell phone nearby.

Our big problem now is that we think his head shaking is so cute, that we can't help ourselves from saying "no, no" just to watch him do this. I fear this is going to confuse him immensely and keep him from actually learning no means to stop doing what he is doing. He does seem to slowly be getting the concept though, because in addition to shaking his head when we say "no", in the last day or so, he has also started shaking his head when he wants US to stop doing something. This mostly involves us shoveling food like green beans in his mouth and putting him in the car seat. He violently shakes his head no while pushing us away. So clearly, he's getting the idea that no means no (or it means Mommy and Daddy laugh at me and then give me lots of kisses because my head shaking is so cute).

2 comments:

mandie lane said...

Ha! I love reading your blog. First, because Joseph is SO cute it's pretty much ridiculous (even when he's shaking his head no). Second, because it gives me a glimpse of what lies ahead for us with Mister A. I think there will be lots of "no nos" going on at our house once he's mobile.

Erin said...

hah! look at him go!

joseph used to (still does, but not as much) shake his head and say "no" when he was doing something he knew he wasn't supposed to, or when we were doing something he didn't want us to do.