Nice Words

After being in the preschool world for so long where the emphasis is on social emotional skills I think we finally made a breakthrough with Madison. We have worked a long time on how to use her "words" to navigate difficult situations instead of having a melt down, hitting, or tattling. One day we were sitting at the dinner table and Madison was concentrating on chipping away at some slush that she wanted to eat. Curtis started teasing her and used his classic line of "look whats over there" and then when she looked the other way he stole the slush. Madison managed to get the slush back once and then Curtis got it away again. I could tell Madison was getting a little agitated when she said, "Daddy please give back the slush" and then when that didn't work she repeated "I want my slush back please daddy". After that attempt didn't get results, she looked at me and with exasperation said "Mommy, I am saying my nice words and he still won't listen to me!"