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My daughter is almost 5 and I’ve made a conscious effort to stop doing whatever I’m doing if she says stop or no.
For example, tickling. If I’m tickling and she says stop, I stop immediately with no back talk.
Or if I’m copying her in a joking way (we both do it to each other from time to time) and she says stop, that’s it. We’re done.
When I’m snuggling with her after reading books before bed, she feels comfortable enough to say, “you can go now” and I that’s it. I leave with no complaints.
In non-safety situations I ask if I can hold her hand. If she says no, that’s it, I’m not holding her hand. Parking lots are a different matter.
I will continue this throughout her entire upbringing so that if (ok, when) someone continues to do something she has said stop or no to, it will be unambiguously wrong to her.
Later when I explain that “no” is a complete sentence, it should feel intuitive.
Screw the haters. This is awesome. Keep it up.
My only concern with this is that she might get the impression that people will do whatever she asks, but there's a ton of context missing which likely demonstrates those concepts to her.
My only suggestion is to make it clear that if she says no, or stop, and someone doesn't stop, do something about that. I'm sure that will be a discussion later. She sounds young enough for it to not be very important right now.
I appreciate this.
I don't have kids and I'm just some guy on the internet, but I appreciate you nonetheless.
I'm sure she'll learn in other ways that people won't always respect when she says no. But she's learning what should be normal from her parents
We've been doing this with our kids; and when they say "no" and someone doesn't stop, you better believe they say something about it!
Similarly, we've been getting consent before the doctor checks any underwear space. No pushback from any doctors or nurses for that either.
I'm really trying to do this with my daughter too - she's 7 and it's getting hard at times because she's wanting space, but I'll give her that as she wants it. Unless it is safety related of course...
This is so sweet and awesome it made my morning
Some advice my parents gave me is: Theres two answers: yes, and everything else
An example of this with me and my gf is that this being my first relationship I am wanting to take this REALLY slow and she respects this. But anyways I don’t remember what she asked it was something pretty tame but I said “maybe” and she responded with “that wasn’t a no but it wasn’t an enthusiastic yes either”