Innocent, I think not!

I’ll give ya’ll a little break from my Insanity talk (even though I have sooo not been given a break with it.)  Today I want to know what to do with a stubborn child with a temper.  Once again, Jesalyn has proven that some things are genetic and some, well, we all have our own personalities.  To reiterate, Jarrod and I were both “easy” babies.  At least that’s what I’ve been told.  As for punishments, all my mom had to do was drop her voice one octave and tell me no and I would immediately stop what I was doing and start crying.  Oh, but not little Jesalyn.  She is one of those children that when you tell her no, she looks at you with those eyes that say “yeah right” and then throws it in the floor anyway.  I never ever would have thought I would have a child like that.  You know how it is, when you are having/or have a child.  You get visions of this sweet, perfect, little child that listens to every word you say. 

So, for any of you that have this same issue, what do we do?  Jarrod is going crazy all day and I’m going crazy on the weekend. We tried slapping the hand (I’m not into whoopin’ and maybe not even slapping the hand.  How can you tell a child not to hit/slap and then you turn around and spank them?) and it doesn’t faze her. Let me tell ya a story.  Last week she was sitting with me while I was on the computer and she started eating some piece of paper.  I took it from her and told her that she shouldn’t do that (as I have thousands of times before.)  She got mad at me and slapped my face.  I took her hand, slapped it (again, slapping her for slapping me just doesn’t add up) just hard enough that it got her attention and told her it wasn’t nice to slap mommy’s face. She looked at her hand, gave me a dirty look and slapped my face again.   

The only thing that has slightly worked is putting her in her highchair away from the tv.  Since she is a mover (go, go, go is all she does,) restraining her makes her mad.  The other day, she walked over to the tv, looked at me because she knew I was watching, and grabbed the cords out of the tv.  Jarrod and I have gotten on to her for doing this since she was able to pull herself up to the tv. She knows it’s a no-no.  But since I was doing something else, not giving her my full attention she decided to get it by doing something she’s not suppose to.  I picked her up, and put her in her chair and told her, again that she is not suppose to play with the cords.  She screamed and cried, but when I put her back down she stayed away from them.

What do you guys do when your child just don’t listen?  Is 16 months even old enough for her to grasp the concept of punishment?

 But she looks so innocent...