Deliberate sign

Lately these few months, Ethan gradually shown his deliberate sign which can easily frustrated his parent but still some were funny when you witness it with your own eyes.
Few cases shown in everyday activities:-
i) Door

• Whenever we want to go out. First things Ethan will do is to grab the door key. He wants to open the automatic gate. After he opened the gate he will find the correct key to insert in the hole of the lock on the door. Actually his intension is to open it by himself but he still cannot do so. Whenever he enters the house, he wants to close the wooden door by himself. He could even lock the wooden door by tiptoe and pressing the lock button with his thumb.

ii) Car

• When daddy wants to drive car, we have to let him press the remote control to open the door of the car. He will only hand over the car key after he has entered the car. He will protest if you didn't switch on the radio. When arrive the home, he will climb to front of the driver seat and drive the car together with the driver - in this case daddy. After driving into the car porch, he will switch off the radio and turn off the car engine. Seems like the car is his possession. He is also very choosy as we have two cars. Normally he will prefer the big car.

iii) Feeding

• For milk he will go and take the handkerchief from the cabinet and all his stuffs, like the blanket, soft toy monkey, etc and lay down on the bed waiting for his milk. If you take his stuffs for him, he will put everything back to the original place and he will then take it by himself. Like one time mummy seen that his hands were full of stuffs so mummy helped him to close the cabinet. What he did next? He walked back to the cabinet and open the cabinet again then closed it. If you really want to help, you have to get his consent first.

• For solid food, normally mummy will let him self feed food like yogurt, fruit, ice cream etc. If the food is hot normally mummy will feed him. If he insists to self feed then mummy had to tell him that the food was "HOT!HOT!" then let his feel the plate with his hands. Only then will he let go of the idea of self feeding.

iv) Household work

• When he sees mother throws the clothes inside the washing machine. He wants to help by grasping whatever clothes and throw them inside the washing machine.
• When it is time to hang the clothes, he will go and take the hangers and also the clips. He will hand over the hangers and clips to mother. We let him hang our clothes by holding him up. He is extremely happy after he managed to hang with mother holding his hand to hang the cloth.
• Washing the plates. He likes to take his plastic plate and throw it inside the sink for mother to wash. Seeing daddy use the cloth to dry the plate, he also wants to help.
• Seeing mother sweeping the floor, he wants to do so as well.
  
• Watering the plant in the garden, he will also want to take part by holding the water pipe.

v) Electric appliance

• You have to let him switch on the TV by pressing the remote control.
• Same for the Radio. If you switch on the electric, he will switch off and on again by him. For playing songs. He wouldn't let you play the CD unless he do so.
• Light and fan in the house he will ask you to hold him to switch them on and off. Well, this one didn't work if he is with mother.

vi) Danger actions

• Refuse to let parents to hold him when he is walking. This freaked us out when he goes on the road with lots of cars.
• Refuse to hold parent hands when step in and out of the escalator.

Vii) Other

• He wants to press the lift button when he has got the chances
• Wearing pants by himself
• Mummy asked him to put back all the stuffs he took out to play. He refuses mother to help him put the things back to original place. If mother helps, he will put the toy back to original place and repeat again. So mother had to wait for him to complete all the things.

Some articles said that don't take this as a deliberate sign of mischief as it is just a normal 2 year old behavior. He only needs to assert his independence. Grandma said that if he wants to help in household work then it is good. We as parents don't treat our kids as our little master. Well, if it is no harm then normally mother will let him try it. For some dangerous actions have to explain to him the rule behind it.

** One thing Ethan should be independent is that he needs to sleep by himself instead of parents have to pat him to sleep. Actually this was our mistake as he already can sleep by himself by turning off the light previously. However, because he was admitted to hospital at one time and we see him so pity so started to tuck him again. Hope that the situation will change later as mummy slowly slowly doesn't want to tuck him if he wakes up in the middle of the night.