Problem: Our 14 month-old is generally pretty obedient, and when we tell her something is off limits, she almost always follows the rule. A little bit ago, however, we encountered a problem in trying to keep her from opening two of the kitchen cupboard doors (safety latches don't work very well on our particular doors). No matter how many times I scolded her, she opened them again and again.
Finally I figured out that she wasn't trying to be bad in opening them, but the rest of the cupboard doors (that weren't off limits) looked just the same, and it wasn't easy for her to distinguish the ones that she wasn't supposed to open.
Solution: I created "no" tags with a picture and the words "This is a "no" to go on the off- limit cupboards. It worked! She just
needed a cue that was easily recognizable. I decided to label everything that was off limits in the apartment with the same tags. I figure that an added bonus will be that the tags are easy indicators of boundaries to show babysitters our rules.
