Hi all,
Just a quick one today cuz I am heading to bed soon…. gotta get as much sleep as possible in case our daughter wakes up in the night. She is usually pretty good, but the other night she was up for about an hour from 3am to 4am, so in case the wind is not blowing in the right direction or the moon is shining the wrong way again tonight, I need to be prepared and rested!
Wanted to share with you our usual technique for leaving places that our son does not want to leave. I find a lot of parents use this technique, and it generally works well, so you probably know about it already or at least have seen it in action, so here goes…
Trying to get our son to leave the playground is like trying to get Paris Hilton to leave a party full of cool people. It just ain’t happening, or at least any time soon.
The only way we have a remote chance of getting him away from his favourite places without a major drama is to do the countdown.
In case you are new to the countdown, it goes like this:
Step 1:
Say: “Okay, , we are going to go in 10 minutes okay? Do you understand? 10 more minutes.” (proceed to obtain acknowledgement from child, if you can turn their attention away from the sandbox, slide, climbing bars, what have you, for a split second).
Step 2:
Wait 5 minutes.
Step 3:
Repeat step 1, inserting “5 minutes” in place of “10 minutes”
Step 4:
Wait 3 minutes.
Step 5:
Repeat step 1, inserting “2 minutes” in place of “10 minutes”
Step 6:
Wait 1 minute.
Step 7:
Repeat step 1, inserting “1 minute” in place of “10 minutes”
Step 8:
Wait 1 minute.
Step 9:
Say: “Okay, it’s time to go! Let’s go!”

Seems like a bit much? I agree! But sometimes this is the only thing that works. I have found that if I just skip to step 9 without doing steps 1-8 first, I have a much lower chance of being able to leave without a drama. It’s kinda like trying to bake a cake without breaking the eggs first… you end up with a real funny looking cake that don’t taste too good.
Join the jam and share your experiences with trying to leave the playground!

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