One more

February 15th, 2016
kids
When Lily wants something, she often wants more than I'm ok giving her. Maybe she wants me to sing forever and not put her down in her crib for the night, maybe she wants to keep playing and it's time to go, maybe she wants to keep eating chocolates; I find this comes up a lot. Something that's been useful in these cases is having a little routine around "one more":

A: more sing
B: [sings]
A: more
B: I'm going to do one more song, and then night-night, ok?
A: [sad]
B: One more?
A: yes
B: [sings]
A: more
B: We did one more song, and now it's time to go night-night.

She still asks for more at the end or protests some, but because she had the heads up she's not really expecting me to say yes, and doesn't get that upset when I tell her no.

We started doing this at maybe a year? When she could just say a few words but mostly just cried to indicate that things weren't to her satisfaction. At that point it looked more like:

B: [starts to put A down in the crib]
A: [cries]
B: [picks A back up]
A: [stops crying]
B: Would you like one more?
A: [cries a little]
B: [sings]
B: Time for night night
B: [puts A down again]
A: [cries a little]

Even though she wasn't at talking age yet, she could still learn the pattern around "one more". It communicated that we were nearly done, that we weren't going to have more of the thing if she cried a lot, and that it was time to adjust.

I've been pretty happy with how this has worked out, but n=1 so this may not generalize.

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Tuberculosis Considered As Dating Strategy

Against some evopsych

via Thing of Things July 8, 2025

Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems

I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). Highlights include what I get out of the Oura ring, correlations between sleep and deep work…

via Victoria Krakovna July 4, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

more     (via openring)