Well, that backfired … or did it?

People often joke that the first word their child spoke clearly was “no”, but all kidding aside the negative is one of the first ten (maybe sometimes first five) words a kid learns to wield expertly in 99% of all normal developmental cases, I would venture to guess by totally making up a statistic on the spot. Our little guy was no exception.

Less common, but not altogether uncommon, is a phenomenon in which the child becomes so enamored of the word “no” that he or she utilizes it indiscriminately. It’s understandable how the pattern gets established: most of the times in which a parent bothers to ask a child a question, it’s a very leading set-up, and a toddler learning self-expression (and/or gleefully anarchic willfulness) will react with heels-dug-in opposition.

“Honey, can you let Mommy finish this please?” “No!”
“Sweetheart, pick up your lethal tripping hazard blocks.” “No!”
“Would you like some creamed spinach, little angel?” “NonononoNO!”

And then when the parent deviates from the script every once in a while, the child can’t zag as fast as mom or dad zigs. So the question “Want to go outside and play?” gets the same lustily yelled “No!” as “Want to stop stomping on the cat?” Or the child will carry over an empty sippy cup and say “More?” and the parent will say “You want some more milk?” and the child will say “No.” It’s just become automatic.

I understand all of this intellectually, but it still managed to drive me crazy when our little guy started showing a strong tendency to say “no” even when he meant “yes”. I didn’t want it to drive me crazy, but it did. So I tried to handle it as best I could, by ever-so-gently correcting him when he misspoke. He would say “no”, and I would say, “I think you mean ‘yes’. Yes? Yes!” The early results of this were encouraging, so I threw myself into it wholeheartedly, and strove to make saying “yes” seem like The Most Fun Thing In The World. On the occasions when my little guy would repeat a reasonable facsimile of the word “yes”, I would pump my fist and shout it again in a drawn out, celebratory way.


So the good news is it really is working (and yes I know this is purely good news for me, because the little guy would have been fine either way and outgrown it eventually if I had left it alone, but … ) and my boy now mostly manages to catch himself, so that when he answers a question where he and I both know the answer should be yes, sometimes he’ll get it right on the first try and other times he’ll say “no” without thinking and then realize that’s wrong and add “yes!” immediately.

The … I’m hesitant to characterize it as bad news, so let’s say it’s the other news … is that he is really quite taken with the hyper-celebratory way of saying yes, and he is provnig to be a gifted little mimic. He doesn’t say it, he shouts it, just like his old man. “Yyyeeesssss!!!” he cries. And he makes a tiny little fist and pumps it in the air when he does. It is silly and slightly weirdly inappropriate and pretty dang adorable. And, again, I know he will grow out of it before too long. I should probably be more bemused by it, but I’m actually enjoying it quite a bit. I think on some level the little guy actually knows it amuses me and that is encouraging him to do it all the more. So maybe he won’t grow out of it that fast. We shall see.