So, for the last month at least, Babby has begun to object when we take stuff away from him. It isn’t all the time. Usually he’s pretty good about it. But sometimes he has his hands on something really interesting but totally inappropriate, and when I take it away from him, he sets up a protesting wail.
Now, when puppies start doing this, it’s time to start on the object exchanges.
The idea behind object exchange is that you need to take things away from your puppy a lot, and either give the object back or replace it with another, better object. This way, when you take something away, your dog doesn’t think it is the end of the universe. He knows that you’re just borrowing the object and if he waits patiently, he’ll get a lot of praise and then get his object returned. Or, if the object isn’t returned, he’ll probably get a treat or another toy in recompense. Besides, he’s learned that he doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter anyway, so he might as well give up now and accept his reward.
Once you have established this mindset, it is much easier to reclaim your shoe/sock/underwear/dead bird from your dog’s ravenous maw. Often the dog will happily deliver the taboo item right to your hand (although that’s not what you want in the case of a dead bird).
So that’s what I’ve begun to do with Babby.
I felt the best place to start object exchanges would be with his plastic bucket o’ shapes, which is probably full of phthalates. They are low value (because there are lots of them and duplicates of each shape) and easily swapped (you can exchange a red triangle for a green square).
So every day, when he’s banging stars and circles together, I say “give that to Mommy!” and reach out for one of the shapes. At first I was mostly prying them out of his chubby little fingers, but now he’s getting the idea and he’s starting to actively try to deliver the shape to my hand. He misses a lot, but it’s the thought that counts.
When I have the shape in my hand, I sign “thank you” while saying in an exhuberant voice “THANK you!”. Then I either hand it back or offer him another shape, which I deliver with a happy “you’re welcome!”.
He thought this was fascinating at first, and for a while he was handing back the shape as fast as I could give it to him, just to watch me do my excited pantomime again. Now it’s beginning to bore him, so he’ll often just hand me the shape and go back to playing, without even waiting to get a shape in return.
That means it’s working.
Soon I will move on to reclaiming higher value items, such as toys and maybe even, someday, his food.
The goal is that when he’s a toddler, and I find him clutching a knife/used tampon/bottle of poison/dead bird, I’ll be able to say “give it to Mommy!” and have him deliver it happily.
It works with dogs, anyway.
If By Yes 
You know, I’ve been telling people for years that training babies & training puppies is really not that different.
From now on, when they look at me funny, I will send them to this post.
LOVE IT.
We’ll see if it pays off!
Okay, so, I totally did this with my husband this weekend. I was 100% in the dog training mindset as well. And now? I will absolutely use it on any future children 🙂 Awesome.
You were training your husband to give up objects?
Pretty much. He was annoying clicking my USB stick that has all my important business info on it, so I traded it for a pen. Thinking about trading objects with dogs the entire time I did it 🙂
You do make me laugh sometimes! Quite often, actually. 🙂
People get terribly upset when you liken child rearing with dog training … and yet, here you are, a parent, doing the same thing. I applaud you! But you seem a very sensible and psychologically well-read woman, on the other hand, so that might have something to do with it as well. 😉
Dang straight. I’ma raise my kid like a puppy. We’ll see how it works out.
I think this is awesome! …And I will totally use it if/when I have kids of my own.
Also, I cannot stop picturing urbancowgirl exchanging brightly coloured plastic shaped with her husband with a dramatic “Thank you!!”
In my mind, it’s a TV remote, but the overall mental image is similar.
Hahahaha! Hilarious.
Yup, we do this a lot. Totally legit baby technique.
(Btw, I know you’ve worried a bit about autism before, but Babby appears to be doing some killer eye contact and interaction, an excellent sign.)
The thing that scares me are the stories of regressions!
You are awesome. That is all. =)
*curtsy*
Too cute! (Just, please, don’t feed him out of dishes on the floor or make him go outside to pee, though, okay? :P)
trust me when it’s a knife, you will say it calmly but your heart will be screaming!!! and you wont care if it bothers him when you gently rip it from his grasp…. trust me… i have a climber…. and he knows not to touch knives now.
cute pictures though, and great ideas. hopefully it works for more interesting or important things later:)
Brilliant!
Also, babby is so cute, it’s unsettling, like the opposite of the unncanny valley effect; normal humans shouldn’t be able to be that adorable.
I agree. If he didn’t look so so much like PH, I’d say he was a changeling.
I’m not sure if I should be insulted by that or not…
A changeling in the sense that he is the offspring of faeries, or elves, not the more horrible implications. Sorry, I should have specified. He is adorable and sweet, the end. 🙂
I don’t see PH all that strongly in babby, but I do get frequent flashes of your mother, which is extra odd because I’ve barely met your parents.
Your childhood adorableness is not in question, Carol -we’ve seen the commercial.
Oh, one of my friends calls him “mini-PH”. He totally looks like his father. I don’t see much of me in him at all.
However, he DOES have pointed ears, Corinne… so maybe he is fey and I’m not the real mother!
I knew it! Eyes that big can’t possibly be human! 😉
THis is a great trick. I wish I’d thought to train my children to give things up before it started being a question of “just hand mummy the scissors, please” (though we have used the swap technique).
I look forward to reading about how this progresses. Sounds like a good idea!