Teaching Your Baby Good Habits

My cousin gave birth to a beautiful baby girl about 16 months ago. This was her first child so everything was completely brand new to her. She along with her husband were learning how to cope with a child for the first time. She told me how it was important it was to teach your child good habits in order to make it easier for yourself as a parent as well for the child. I'll share a bit of her experiences with it and hope that new parents out there can relate.

My cousin has been around a lot of young children during her life and this is mostly in part due to the fact that she comes from a very large family. One thing she had noticed with children after 12 months of age is that the baby would throw their feeding bottle out of the crib after they had finished consuming it. She had this problem with her young girl after she was born. It's obviously normal for a baby to do this and parents will sometimes get frustrated but at a very young age, you can use certain techniques to your advantage as a parent.

As soon as she noticed that her baby was finished with the feeding bottle, she would walk over to the crib and ask for the bottle. All the while, she is smiling and clapping her hands. She made a game out of it which encouraged the baby (since it seemed like play) to give her the bottle without throwing it out of the crib. After the baby gave her the bottle, she made sure to praise her child in order to show that giving her mother the bottle was the right thing to do. She did it several times with her baby girl. As of now, the child remembers this and when she is finished with her bottle and her mother asks for it, she automatically gives it to her with it becoming any sort of a problem.

Another example she gave me was when her baby girl would throw toys out of the crib in order to gain attention from her mother. My cousin would continually pick up the toys and put them back in the crib only to have her baby do the same thing over and over again. Obviously this wasn't working. The next time her daughter threw a toy outside of the crib, she would just ignore her. This showed her baby that what she was doing was wrong and she wouldn't get her toy back if she continued to did that. Another problem solved.

It can be overwhelming and frustrating at times to be a new parent but teaching them good habits at a young age in the end can be extremely rewarding and teaches them good values which will hopefully help them in the future.