You were fantastic and doing everything right, right up until the point when you couldn't help yourself and smiled. Kids -- esp girls -- are crazy good at picking up those cues, and they take those as encouragement or rewards for their behaviour. And then they'll repeat their behaviour because they are expecting to get rewarded again for engaging in that same behaviour. (In your case, that behaviour could be throwing tantrums.)
When you need to be stern, you have to keep it up all the way through, or the effort will be meaningless. My MIL has a habit of laughing when my kid engages in certain types of "naughty" behaviour, even when we are disciplining him, and I get super upset with that because her laughing is just totally ruining our efforts to discipline him. In fact, it is egging him to keep on being naughty.
From one Baba to another -- you gotta hold it together, man. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to smile, laugh, and play with her. But when you need to be stern, you gotta be stern.
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Originally Posted by inv4zn
Our girl turns 1 this weekend, but I can already see myself struggling with being stern with her.
She recently started throwing the worst 'tantrums' right before bedtime - flailing arms, arched backs when held, screaming, etc. Last night her mom was getting so mad I took the baby away, stood her in the corner in my arms, and said 'you're giving your mom a very hard time, that's not good' - in a stern way so she knows I'm not playing around.
She stood there for a few seconds looking at my face, and then hung her head in shame. I couldn't help but smile, and she saw this immediately - and went right back to being a little shit haha.
Then this morning she woke up at 5:40am because she had a big poo and woke us all up...lol
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