1. Respect Mommy and Daddy. Obey.
2. No whining.
3. Have fun (he helped - and then I added); but be serious sometimes too.
4. No hitting (new learned behavior -ugg).
5. No screaming.
If you like, you could make some of these positive just by rewording. E.g. replace 5. by "When indoors, use an indoor voice" - we designated anything too loud, which would include screaming, as an outdoor voice. It did sometimes happen that we went out because DS wanted to use his outdoor voice, but that's fine. (Of course, buildings like shops and restaurants are indoors :-) Some people do "use gentle hands" for "no hitting" but I somehow felt that was twee, or something. Whining - I don't have a positive way to phrase it, but what really helped us to deal with it was simply to declare a policy that a whiny voice couldn't be understood (sometimes literally true of course!), so I'd just say (in neutral tones) "Sorry, I didn't understand that" if he whined something.
I think you're right to be concerned about putting things positively, actually - it seemed to me that reminding DS to do the right thing (positive) works much better than criticising something he is doing (negative).
