Habit Training my 18 month old

You are absolutely right to begin now. As soon as a child can understand no, he should be epected to obey it. As you just described, he does understand and you see he has the ability to obey. To not enforce that is to allow the habit of disobedience to set in. And I can tell you from experience (6 kids and baby on the way) that it doesn’t take anything but that to set it in pretty good. If you can set yourself like flint (and I don’t mean harshly at all, but I’m talking about your will to do the job you’re called to do) to see that he has no opprotunity to disobey beginning right now, you will be taking a HUGE step in the direction of “smooth and easy days”. He will quickly learn to choose to obey b/c everything is so much nicer that way. What I would give to have understood clearly with my first 5 children what has now finally sunk in. My 6th child is amazingly (to me) compliant and obedient at two and a half, compared to his older sibs. Diaper changes are a wonderful opportunity to teach obedience. You do it several times every day, and from the time they begin to try crawling away, they can be taught – gently but firmly – to lie still. How many children I have endrued playing “catch me if you can” and never would have needed to!! So I encourage you to press on. You’ll have a much easier life and much happier children than I have! Wishing you well!!!!

I agree, there is no need to wait to start training.  I run a home daycare, and I’m often amazed at the fits that children will throw in front of their parents, or the outright defiance of their parents requests, when they rarely behave like that with me.  The children know that it will work with their parents, but that I’m immune to it, and will follow through with my expectations. 

Here is an example.  I just started watching a little guy, 21 months.  He had a screaming, kicking, flailing-on-the-floor tantrum on the day that his parents came to interview me.  They just said “He’s started doing that whenever he doesn’t get his way”.  He tried it with me the first day he was here, when I asked him to come with me from one room to another.  He crumpled to the floor and screamed.  I simply picked him up, balanced him against me, then held on to his legs and ‘walked’ them in the direction I expected him to go.  I always communicate that “Since you can’t obey by yourself, I will help you obey”.  When he continued screaming, I gently placed my hand in front of his mouth and said “Too loud!”  He was startled.  He starred at me, then started screaming again.  I did the same thing again.  He stopped screaming, finished walking to the room where I needed him to be, and went to play happily.  We’ve done the same type of thing about 5 times in the 4 days that he has been in my home, always with the fit stopping in shorter amounts of time.  Today, he started screaming and looked about to drop to the floor and start flailing.  I said “Too Loud”, and he stopped and went on to do what I had asked.

Of course, the expectations have to be age appropriate and within the ability of the child to achieve, but they totally can understand and learn to obey.  Sometimes it takes much longer, with a lot more repetition, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.