Learning Vs. Frustration

Our daughter is right on the verge of walking (yay!) which means she's standing on her own, pulling herself up and pushing things around. She loves to grab certain things and push them around the house. Although sometimes she gets frustrated because she'll run into a wall or the couch and it stops her forward progress. She doesn't understand that she can't just keep pushing it right through the wall and she hasn't figured out that it's more effective to just turn around and go the other way.

So this morning she was pushing the laundry basket and was getting frustrated that she couldn't push it through the hallway because she wanted to push it through at an angle that didn't quite work. She kept getting stuck. Mom shifted the angle of the basket so that our daughter could push it through, but she insisted on pushing it HER way and the basket kept getting stuck. This lead to frustration and crying. Mom wanted to keep adjusting the basket until our daughter figured it out. I scooped up our daughter and comforted her so that she would stop crying (which, of course, she did).

Mommy's argument was that she needs to keep trying until she learns, even if she gets frustrated in the process. Daddy's argument was that there's value in teaching our daughter to take a break from something if it's getting too frustrating. This is something I've had to learn over the years: If you leave something alone and come back to it with fresh eyes, often you'll have a different perspective and it's more effective than trying to plow through something that's not working.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Input is more than welcome...

Thanks!
-t.

Bonus Episode #1: Sex!

The last two episodes of Two New Dads (Year One) are bonus episodes that we weren't originally planning to launch, but people told us they were just too funny to keep to ourselves. So check out Bonus Ep. #1: "Sex", now online: