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• Understand why pēpi is trying out new things and new behaviours.
• Establishing rules and limits and being consistent.

You will likely have already discussed how life changes as a pēpi grows and develops, with the most noticeable changes happening when they become mobile.

• Baby has an instinctual drive to get moving and to try to find out about everything in their world.

How parents respond to new behaviours will help to shape the character of their pēpi, along with their confidence and desire to learn or try new things.

• You might have a personal experience when you tried something new and someone made you feel stupid or so embarrassed that you didn’t want to try again.
• Wouldn’t it be great if we could save our children from this type of experience?

If we think more about why our pēpi is trying to grab everything in sight, putting things in their mouth, throwing things, dropping things or taking everything apart, we might feel less frustrated.

• When we see these behaviours as learning experiences, where they’re trying to find out about everything, we can respond to our pēpi more positively. They’re helping pēpi’s brain to grow.

Even as adults, we have a natural desire to find out about things. When we come across something new, we might go through a process of thinking:

• What is this?
• What do I know about this already?
• What is it like?
• What can I do with this?
• What happens if I do this?

Imagine what chaos or reactions could arise from the last question! But this is exactly how pēpi starts exploring.

• When they’re being curious they’ll want to do things over and over again. It would be easy to think they’re being naughty and just trying to annoy us or test our limits. But are they?

What sort of things have you noticed baby doing when exploring something or doing something over and over again? What might that be about?

It might help us to revisit what we’ve done to make our home safe for baby and what limits we want them to learn. Are the rules we’ve made going to make life easier for our pēpi, ourselves and our whānau?

• We know that most whānau can only cope with about 5 rules at a time, if we want to reinforce them consistently every time.

As a group or in pairs, explore some of the following questions:

• Do you have any new ideas about what you might want to put away or shift in your home to make it easier for you and pēpi?
• Why might pēpi keep going back to the television, cellphone, pot plant, cat food and all the other enticing things around the house?
• What could you do when they keep going back to the same thing time after time?
• What sort of limits and boundaries (rules) do you want your pēpi to learn?
• How do you help them to learn those rules?
• What rules do you have for yourself, your partner or other whānau members?
• How well do you stick with your limits or reinforce whānau rules, when you’re:
  • energetic
  • happy
  • tired
  • grumpy
  • worried
  • having a few friends around
  • having a few drinks?
• What messages do you think you’re giving pēpi?