A two-year-old child receives up to 400 orders a day, aren't they too many?

It is often said that children live as they please, that they do what they want and that, in short, they live like kings. However, I am not sure that this is the case when I read that there is an investigation that says that Children aged two to four receive an average of 400 orders per day. And i ask myself, Aren't they too many?

Orders such as get up, get dressed, eat everything, come here, etc., which show that in many cases we are the absolute controllers of their lives, with continuous imperative words that try to get children to do what we want them to do.

I speak of an interview that has been done to Alfredo Hoyuelos, Doctor of Philosophy and Education Sciences, in which he speaks of such research that, I am very sorry, I have not been able to find.

Too many orders

Even so, the conclusion is already informative enough to be able to pull the thread a bit, and that is that 400 orders are, in my view, many orders. If we say that a child from 2 to 4 years can be awake about 10 hours a day (so they still sleep a little nap), the thing is that they can receive 40 mandates every hour, which is equivalent to one order every 90 seconds.

I have a 2-year-old child and I don't really get the bills. It is true that you tell them many things, that you give them many orders, especially because you want to avoid putting them in danger and because you want to prevent them from bothering you (that the little ones, sometimes, do not see). "Leave your brother", "do not scratch", "come here", "get out of there", are usual orders at home, but I doubt I will give them up to 400 times, because luckily we have some ace in the sleeve, which is based on trying to occupy the child so as not to have to be continually telling what he cannot do. "We are going to paint", "we are going to play ...", "see how I play ...", and what comes to mind, so that what you wanted to do is taken from your head and you don't want me to do it.

On the other hand, a child also has his moments of tranquility, alone or with his siblings, in which he does not need you to be behind watching to constantly tell him what he has to do in the next minute of his life.

We are doing something wrong, if we seek continuous obedience

So, as I say, if we are reaching those numbers, if we are getting to give so many orders to our children, looking for almost continuous control and obedience to our words, we are doing something wrong. In fact, even our children are likely to let us know, because there is no 2-year-old child who supports so much control. Just when they are crying out for freedom to explore the entire world, just when it turns out that they are better able to climb places, to walk and run and get there where it did not arrive before, we go and we are in sergeant plan to order and send .

No, children don't usually listen to us and I guess that's why they say "they do what they want" or "they don't listen to me" or "I can't do it with him". Well, he is telling you, with his disobedience, that it is worth controlling so much And surely everything would be better if you changed tactics.

Helping them to choose

Change tactics? You are right. A two-year-old child can choose in many moments what to do next, but it is also not that he has a lot of life on his back and is not always able to choose well (sometimes they get worse in having something that is impossible to have, in trying to see what if he hurts his older brothers or you know what), as well as He is not always able to find what to do to have fun.

Well, in those moments, when we see that they enter into a spiral of absurd or exasperating acts, or when you see that it seems that you don't know what to do, we can (we) be there offer alternatives and not fall into that non-continuous, or in that succession of mandates such as "this no, honey", "this either, honey", "and this, it will be that neither" ... that we seem short of ideas. Instead of saying so much no, because as my friends said when we were young: "OK, you don't want to go to the usual record, well go, tell you where", that is, there are times when it is not worth leaving them all elections, because we enter a game of yes and not endless. Then just say what we are going to do next (that the child likes a little, of course), to divert your attention and mark the direction in that direction a little.

Orders Needed

And I do not say now with this that children do not have to receive orders. They have and should receive them because we are their parents and your safety and education depend on us. But one thing is to say "you can't take a knife" or "it doesn't stick, that you hurt" and a very different one to turn our whole relationship with the child into a succession of orders, many of them inconsistent with age, like "stay sit here and do not move, "when you know that the last thing a two-year-old child is going to do is pay attention to you or" come and I show you this so beautiful, "when you teach him something that doesn't interest him in the slightest just because you try Be still in a public place.

Come on, in short, less orders and more imagination, that is why we are adults and we have to have enough capacity to create situations that seem fun. Don't they say that kids love magic and fantasy? Well, don't leave it all for the Three Wise Men and the little mouse Perez ... I have come to say to my children, that they didn't want to go to pee in the morning, because then it was time to go to school, "Come on, your pee is wishing go out ... see what he says? 'I'm your pee, I want to go to the river, let me out and pull the chain, please' ", and get the child to go to the sink, urinate, pull the chain and then listen as he says (the pee): "Wiiiiuuuuuu" as he goes down the pipes, following them to the parking lot, where we look at the roof to continue hearing "Yujuuuuú" seconds before entering the car, on the way to school.

It is just one example of so many. He pee talking, which replaces "come on, come on we don't get there", "always the same", "run that they'll punish you", etc., etc.

Why not try? We are not losing anything and they have much to gain.

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