It’s one of the best lessons I ever learned from my kids’ paternal grandmother.

Toddlers have notoriously short attention spans. They also have very few resources from which to draw to know how to effectively and calmly express their emotions. The result? A little person with unpredictable moods and unstable actions.

Distraction is simple, really. So obvious, it’s easy to overlook. I mean, who wants to be constantly saying “no” and engaging in a battle of wills with a person who still wets his pants? Especially when the solution is so much more pleasant, gets parents a lot further and almost always works?

Let’s say, for example, your 2-year-old decides that she doesn’t want to take a nap. (That never happens, right?) Instead of engaging her in a power struggle, you tell her she can play for 2 more minutes (they have no concept of time, after all) and then show her how to march to her bed. This takes the focus off of bed and puts it on how we’re getting to bed. Marching worked wonders with my kids. I felt like an idiot sometimes, chanting, “March, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, hup, two, three, four,” and marching somewhere, but they thought it was a hoot. It always, without fail, distracted them from my goal.

Singing is another amazing tool that most parents don’t use enough. When a child is upset or pouting, often singing some silly songs will put him right back into his previously cheerful mood.

I’m not advocating avoiding discipline. We all know kids have to be disciplined at times. For a child who is too young to understand the reasons behind her parents’ instructions though, distraction is almost always the only thing that’s needed once you’ve said, “I don’t want you to do that.” There will be plenty of time for explaining the whys of your rules later.

After all, you want to enjoy his toddler years, right? Explore the wonder, the magic, the joy toddlers find in everything. Be goofy, be ridiculous, embarrass yourself. Pick her up and move her to another area. Surprise her with a short tickle session. Make up a story. Be spontaneous. Tell him what you need him to know, i.e., he shouldn’t be pulling the baby’s hair, and move him along to a new activity.

Some distracting activities:

♥ coloring, with washable crayons, of course

♥ singing

♥ having her copy your actions, i.e., clap your hands, stomp your feet, twirl, etc.

♥ going for a walk

♥ marching to your destination

♥ getting a snack and/or drink

The possibilities are endless.

Try it. And come back to let me know how it works for you.

Do you already or have you used distraction with your toddler? Have you found it to be effective?

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That’s my four-year-old, Logan. He’s absolutely exhausting. In many ways, he’s my easiest child — constantly smiling, singing and skipping, and always glowing with an innate joy — but in some aspects, he’s definitely the most difficult. A raw and demanding curiosity coupled with a strong sense of independence equals a whirlwind of chaos.

It’s sort of like still having a toddler, only worse because he can reach higher, think harder and do a lot more damage than the average two-year-old. The hardest part about it is that I don’t think he means to be destructive most of the time; he’s been very curious about how things work since babyhood, as well as figuring out cause and effect.

It probably seemed like a good idea to put a roll of toilet paper in the sink and give it a soaking until it puffed out to twice its normal size. It was undoubtedly great fun to flush his sister’s toothbrush down the toilet, causing backups and overflows of really disgusting matter before we figured out what the problem was. So much fun, that he proceeded to flush both his sisters’ toothbrushes yesterday morning, even though he has been forbidden to do said deed.

He’s taken my car keys and hidden them in my desk, lost my wedding/engagement ring (permanently, unfortunately), combined the last bag of my favorite ground coffee with cooked spinach and a touch of water, dumped whole boxes of cereal on the floor, saturated the entire bathroom floor during a bath, repeatedly poured his Legos and blocks down the stairs purely for the entertainment of watching them fall, and a host of other activities that have meant major clean-up for me.

Perhaps many kids do this sort of thing, but none of my other kids did, so this is a new experience for me. And it’s never-ending. If he’s not in my sight, I’m worried, and almost always with good reason.

When he was a baby, he’d spend long periods of time turning toy cars over and over, running his finger along the wheels, absorbed in the mechanics of spinning tires. At age two, I watched in amazement as he placed every piece in the game Perfection within a few minutes. Those pieces are tiny, and many of them are quite similar.

For Logan, the world is an exciting place, with endless concepts and the workings of household objects to be explored. I’d like to say that I share in his enthusiasm for discovering how things work, but that would be a lie. When his “discoveries” and “inventions” create wreckage and chaos, which is nearly always, I’m not pleased.

However, when he grows up to be a successful engineer or architect, I’ll know that I was behind the whole thing.