Gus and I have recently aspired to teach Max the word no. Until recently, we never used the 'N word' and got by simply by making everything with in his reach 'yes'. Then we traveled to Bloomington. This highlighted two things for us....first of all, when travelling, many things are no and we had no ability to convey this to Max. Second, Viola knew the word no...so Max was obviously old enough to learn it. And so we set out to teach our son the word no.
The good news is that Max quickly learned the word. In fact, it is the first word he has learned to say and he happily talks away to himself, "no no no no no", as he goes about his day. Needless to say, this does not make us look like very good parents. Unfortunately, Max's definition of the word no appears to be "all fun things are called nos." The plus side of this is that he lets you know when he is up to something bad by loudly declaring "no!" from the other room. And so when you rush to the bathroom to see him with his sights set on the toilet moving full speed ahead, you sternly proclaim "Max, that's---" and he finishes happily, "NO!"
It seems we may need to start time out.
