Spitting

My lovely daughters have started spitting. They learnt this from their big brother who thought it was funny last week (awesome). I stopped the behaviour with him with a couple of time outs but now the girls are still doing it and I have no idea how to stop it.

They are too young for time-outs (not quite 16 months old) and I find this a difficult behaviour to stop with redirection. With the hitting, pushing, hair pulling, etc I am usually able to say "we use nice hands" or "be gentle with your sister" etc but what do you do with spitting other than say "NO!"??? When I do say "NO" they laugh and do it again (Dannik also thinks it is hilarious and says "I taught them that!" (which results in a time out for him)...why can't he teach them something useful, like how to talk????). Anyway, do I just ignore it and hope it goes away? Any suggestions?

 

I would ignore it. Once they stop getting a reaction it won't be as funny any more.

 

You could try making a loud sharp noise (like going "Ah-AH") to try and surprise them into stopping, then tell them no spitting. That worked quite well for me when mine were in the screaming-loudly-for-fun phase.
Or you could try distracting them by giving them something else 'fun' to do with their mouths that's more acceptable to you. Like wibbling their bottom lip, or patting their mouths with their hand to get that wah-wah-wah sound. Once they've learnt how to do that then whenever they spit tell them no spitting and start doing the other thing in hopes that they copy. Can they make any animal sounds yet? You could try to distract them by asking "what do ______ say?" (This worked for my lot because they loved to make animal noises so they were always happy to have an excuse to start impersonating a farmyard).

I hope they get bored of it soon.

 

I agree that ignoring or distracting is probably the best method for curtailing this behavior. They're probably doing it to get a rise out of you; the fact that they laugh when you say "no" pretty much proves that. Dannik is *definitely* old enough to know better and should get a time out for encouraging them, but the more attention you give to your DDs when they spit, the more they will probably do it. ardon:

If they like taking cues from your older DS, make *him* distract them by having him do something more acceptable that they want to copy (like making animal noises, etc.)!

 

yeah, never really had the spitting problem here... of course occasionally they blow raspberries to get my attention and i usually just tell them its 'yucky' or 'gross' and scrunch up my face... they arnt hurting anyone, it really is just gross!

 

It seems that the fascination has dies down over the weekend so hopefully they are done with it . I had Dannik help by telling them "food stays in our mouth" (if they were doing it while eating or drinking) and then show them how to put food in, instead of spit it out, and of course they would copy him. When they did it randomly during the day I would distract with other noises or singing and it seemed to work.

I think they were getting the biggest rise out of Dannik laughing so once I had him on my side it was easier to stop the behaviour. We're still working on him telling him how much his sisters like to do what he does, some days he's great, other days he's showing them what not to do, I guess that's the advantage of having an older sibling, lol .

Thanks for the ideas!!!

 

I agree with PP's, I would ignore it. When my two discovered spitting, I did not make a big deal about it and would say, "It's not polite to spit or spit yucky!" I am glad that the fascination has died down in your house!