Yesterday afternoon I grabbed a yogurt. Monkey first tried to tell me I didn’t want one at all but when I insisted that I did, in fact, want one he decided to supervise. He began by just watching me eat but when I was nearly finished he instructed me to put it down on the table. As soon as I did so he signed “all done” and told me “no!” I wasn’t even supposed look at it after that! Whenever he caught me looking at him, as he pilfered the last of my snack, he’d tell me no. When I told him “Dude, that was mine!” he just laughed.
Punk.
hee hee…way to be assertive!
Lest anyone think I’m a total pushover…we’re trying to reward any communication attempts and the most effective seems to be acknowledging by action what he is telling us. So if he tells us to put “down” the yogurt I put down the yogurt.
It is working, he’s using words more and more…we’ll deal with the monster we’re creating down the line I guess.