We are into the spilling phase of childhood. Sam spills her milk at least once a day now. She almost never spilled like this in the past, even when she first started using a regular cup. She loves cleaning up, so that consequence does not deter her. Instead, I try to show that I'm frustrated with it, but that it's not the end of the world. In the meantime, I'm stuck with a lot of clean up, even with her help.
Yesterday she was in her booster seat at the table, drinking from a glass, and I was doing the dishes. I started thinking, "I hope she drops that glass and it shatters." She's been using glasses as well as plastic cups for a long time and I was hoping the first time she shattered one would be such a traumatic experience that it would teach her to be more careful. Because of the spilling, I was becoming paranoid about her dropping a glass and I wanted to get it over with.
Not a minute later, I got my wish. The problem is, she didn't freak out. In fact, I think she just found it kind of interesting. I should have known - this kid pops balloons on purpose and laughs at the explosions, and she taunts the cat to get him to swipe at her so she can try to duck away in time. So I made her stay in her booster seat while I cleaned it up, which took at least 20 minutes. I thought for sure she would get bored and hate having to sit still, but she just watched me.
Today, she dropped another one. I'm going to have to get creative with some other kind of natural, or at least related, consequence.
Perhaps, if this would be a negative for her, say that if she can't control her cups better, she will have to go back to sippy cups? With my kids, they'd probably be excited to go back to sippy cups, just for the novelty of it, so it wouldn't work for me. But if Sam values her big girl cups, having to go "backwards" might be a sufficient consequence to convince her to change her behavior.
ReplyDeleteOr, just make sure the cups are unbreakable for now, and deal with spilling until she has figured out all the various and wonderful ways in which gravity works. :-) It seriously could be only another couple of weeks and then you won't even remember she ever did this.