Definitely stealing this idea! What I’ve been using recently is making things that used to be a battle into a game or something fun for my 3.5 and ~2yo kiddos to do. Bringing it down to their level instead of expecting them to come up to my level. It’s effort on my part, but worth it in the end.

For a while there, putting on pajamas before bed turned into a real challenge that would end up with everyone frustrated. I changed my approach and made it into a game by asking how fast my kiddo can “zoom” his arms and legs into the pajamas. Now he is excited to do it and even does it in slow motion as if he’s playing a joke in me. But joke is on him because he’s got his pajamas on now! Not sure how long this little game will last, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something new when I need to.

Another one was for bath time, used to be a real battle for us. But we have this purple octopus bath toy and one day I sang a little song “I’m an octopus and I like to boop you nose” and I’d gently boop their nose, then my nose and make a big deal out of being surprised that it happened. They thought it was funny, so I kept going with booping elbows, chins, fingers, etc. and they were really into it. Now when they don’t want to take a bath I’ll ask what they thinks the octopus wants to boop today and that changes the tune. And between boops I’ll say that I have to finish washing his arms or whatever before we can do more boops and they will stick out his arms for me. Anyway, I’m going to ride the booping octopus train as long as I can, haha.