How did “No” become such a hated word? A word that our world has decided should be disgraced? There was a time I put in an effort to not use the word “No”. My thesaurus was completely exhausted lol 🙂
A particular story comes to mind that helped shape my resolve on the word “No”…
As a long time daycare provider, my daily life revolved around little people under the age of five. Admittedly most of my time was spent sitting on the floor playing games with the children, and refereeing. One particularly challenging child was working on “being gentle” and sharing with me. As a result I found myself saying “No” way too much, so I began looking up alternatives. Zed is not the child’s name, but for obvious reasons …
“Hey Zed how about instead of hitting our friends we go play with a puzzle, we have to remember to use our words when someone upsets us”, I took a deep breath, Zed was angry so maybe this diversion would work.
“Zed, please explain why you broke the toy? Now it is garbage. Lets get a different toy, try again and please be gentle”, pleased with myself he selected a different toy.
“Zed, are we making good choices, how about coloring?”
The days turned to weeks. Zed continued down the same pathway, constantly being corrected. Finally after being mentally and physically exhausted, I sat Zed down with his parents. The conversation included everything the daycare had done to help resolve the the problem, all of the deterrents. Finally his weary Parents ask Zed, “Why didn’t you just stop misbehaving so you could play with your friends?”
Zed takes a deep breath, smiles and says “Well she never said No, every time I did something wrong, she gave me something new to do instead”