Don't

How many times in a day do I say "don't do that" or "stop that" or "get off"? I have no clue, but I think I do it a lot. Not at the office, but at home with my kids.

I think my kids need to hear it, but then again sometimes maybe they don't. All the comments above are negative. Sometimes they're not even doing anything that bad, but it's just something I don't want them to do. 

What if instead, I would say "do this..." or "let's go..." or "what about..."? I many times want the easy stop to what they're doing that I don't want them to do, but it's just using my parental authority to get them to stop instead of getting to their heart and teaching them to do something else instead. As a parent of little ones, 5 and under, I have so many opportunities to teach, and many times I use excuses like I'm tired or I want to just do something else. What something I could "do" today with them so I'm not saying "don't" so much? Movies and video games are not an answer!

What about picking an animal that they don't know anything about and looking it up and teaching them about it. Show them a video of them. Have them hear the sound they make. Or talk about a job that some people do and what their day looks like. Maybe find something old in the house that we don't use like an old phone or cassette tape player and ask them what they think it does and then show them how it worked. Read them a book. It doesn't take long to come up with a list, but at the moment when you're saying, "don't do that" things don't come so naturally.