I had my third babysitting gig with this particular child yesterday, and I remembered something I had forgotten: When children start throwing temper tantrums or getting fussy over nothing in particular, what should you do?
Ignore them.
It seems so obvious. But the first time I went down there, the kid was all freaked out by not having his parents around when he woke up and dealing with this stranger in his house instead. The second time, he was a bit jet-lagged from a trip.
This time, he was just testing me occasionally, with typical two-year-old resilience. And he figured out pretty quickly that he gets to have more fun with me when he's not insisting that he be allowed to dump water all over the ground out of his sippy cup. That gets a sippy cup taken away, and all protests are steadfastly ignored until he can agree that he will use the cup to drink, not to adorn the floor with droplets.
A simple lesson, yes -- but invaluable.
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