I was talking to an old friend of mine who has a two-year-old yesterday. We were discussing the onset of terrible two-ness and the continuation into the defiant threes (threadbare threes? throw-myself-under-a-train threes? thick-with-tantrum threes?) and he mentioned that distraction and redirection is still working well for him in relation to his son.
"For example," he said, "yesterday (my son) was upset because I wouldn't let him walk on a ledge. He was crying and screaming, and it wasn't getting better. So I said to him, 'Look! A chicken!' And that got his mind off things for a minute."
"Hold it," I broke in. "There was a chicken in downtown San Francisco?"
"Well, no," he admitted. "But there could have been, and that distracted him."
"So what you're telling me is that you have invented the imaginary poultry school of parenting."
"Pretty much."
Brilliant, isn't it? It would not have occurred to me. This is why collaborating with other parents is so important.