Yesterday, I baked two lasagnas, because I am a good wife and my husband needed more frozen lunches for his stockpile.  I always freeze our leftovers into individual meals so he never has to take cardboard frozen food to work with him.  Anyway, they were ready to put in the oven, but my daughter, who is two and a half, was roaming around the kitchen underfoot, and I didn’t want to have her in the room while I had the hot oven open long enough to stick them both in.

And yet… anyone who has ever had a two year old knows that shutting them out of the action rarely goes well.  So I herded her into the living room and shut the kitchen gate and explained to her that she needed to stay right there just long enough for us to sing the ABC song and then she could come back in.  Now, I have tried putting her on the other side of the gate when she didn’t want to go before, and it usually prompts a fit.  Telling her that she could come back in a minute never worked because “a minute” is not really a construct she understands.  But, the length of the ABC song?  She knows that.   She was totally okay with standing there while I sang to her and she watched me put dinner in the oven.  Before the song was even over, I was back to her and opening the gate again.

(I also do this while brushing her teeth, and I think that there are probably a lot of other times it would be helpful.)

So.. next time you need to do help your small child be patient, try it and see if it works for you.