One of Annie's best friends is Ilana Alderman, an animal trainer who, over the last few years, has been using what she knows about behavior to help create fun games for her son -- games that enrich his brain and games that require her to consider consequences, appropriate rewards, and antecedent arrangements in order to help him engage in necessary behaviors using positive reinforcement rather than punishment or coercion.  Episode features a special appearance by Magnolia Pedicone, who is 2.5 years old.  Find Ilana on Instagram @baby_enrichment and on the web at Childcooperativecare.com.  Find this blog post at: https://childcooperativecare.wordpress.com/2021/04/13/14-tips-for-brushing-your-toddlers-teeth-without-tears/

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

So there is this incredible person who I have been trying to get to be on the podcast for literally years. Now, she is one of the most interesting people I know, period. And certainly one of the most interesting animal trainers I know.  Her approach to animal training fascinates me endlessly. And what’s hilarious is she is one of my very best friends, and the amount of pleading I’ve done with her to come on the podcast, I mean, it’s pretty ridiculous.

And there are two reasons. One, she’s a full-time mom and especially in this last pandemic year really hasn’t had a lot of reliable alone time. And the other reason is she is more of a perfectionist than I am. I’m like, let’s just have a conversation. It’ll be awesome. We’ll just talk about you and animal training and how could it be bad, but she, you know, wants to know what questions I’m going to ask in advance and wants to be able to prepare.

So it’s been, it’s been a struggle, but I think I have finally convinced her to come on as a guest. This incredible person is named Ilana Alderman. And sometimes on Mondays when I’ve been able to get my act together over the last few months, I’ve just read things that I have found online or that I have in actual real books, things that have impacted me or made me think about behavior and dogs and humans in new ways.

And so in advance of her coming on School for the Dogs podcast as a guest in the next week or two, I’m hoping, I thought I would read this fabulous blog post she wrote about training her favorite animal to train to brush his teeth. And her favorite animal to train is her two year old son.

She has this new blog called childcooperativecare.com. She’s also on Instagram @baby_enrichment. And she has been talking about parenting from the perspective of someone who has trained many species of animals and is now focusing on one species and one individual of that species above all.

So I thought today I would just read her blog post, which she put up a couple months ago on this new blog. It is called “14 tips for brushing your toddler’s teeth without tears.” Of course, I will also link to this in the show notes. And if you go there, you can see how adorable her little boy is. And some video.  Here we go:

When I began brushing my son Eytan’s teeth, I made so many mistakes. I tried lots of things. Some worked, some didn’t. I had to get over a few setbacks when I rushed to get it done and forced it. Luckily kids are resilient and I was able to learn from my mistakes. I decided to share what has worked for me so that you can hopefully benefit from my experience and be inspired to come up with your own games.

Full Transcript at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast

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