I THINK I like/agree with the article but I found it a bit vague.

I use "no" sparingly with DD for a lot of reasons:

a) I think it's good that she experiments. Yes, I let her switch the bedroom light on and off before bed even though it means that she stands on a chest of drawers to do it and pushes me away so I can't stand too close to her.

b) She is too young to understand the reason why I'm saying "no" half the time so I tend to use distraction. Though, ironically (as it's one of the examples that the author uses) I DO say no when she spills water on the floor because we have a concrete floor and it's dangerous because she goes flying and babies' heads and concrete floors are a bad combo. I do try to teach her why and say, "no spilling, spilling slippy" with a few flailing arm actions to demonstrate and get her to help me clean up. But after that happened five times in as many minutes, I may just restrict her to only drinking from a cup in her high chair. No, I'm not going to run a bath every time she has a spill and we don't have a backyard hose.

As for the CC debate, I too think the socialisation thing is a furphy at this age. I take DD to Mothers Group and a playcentre. DD is very friendly to the adults, will wave her little hand off, go up to them, start pointing to her nose, their nose, everyone's noses but is not very interested in the other toddlers. We are lucky enough to qualify for a in-home carer who also works at a childcare centre and when I raised the issue of socialisation with her and what age should we start introducing DD to childcare for socialisation, even she said it was pointless at this age and to wait until DD is two or three. I'm not against CC - I use it because I have to as well but my reasons are financial/sanity not for DD's socialisation.