We all begin to explore the word "no" when we are VERY young. So, some of our discomforts about saying "no" can really go way back in each of us. How a parent handles this stage can leave someone feeling bad about saying "no", because when we were experimenting with that word a parent might have punished us instead of giving us options and helping us understand how to use "no" better. Here is a link of how a parent should handle this stage, some of us may not have had that, but instead were punished for saying "no". It's interesting in that some of these ways to address the no challenge can be used in our now that can be less harsh instead of it becoming a confrontation that we may have experienced before we even know what it even really meant.

| Bright Horizons(R)