I haven't read through all the responses so I might be duplicating, but my own personal experience on good distraction/redirection strategies is it really just did not work for my DD, at least not for long. By the time she was 15 months it definitely didn't work. DD was/is head strong and no matter how many times we tried to redirect she wasn't having it. She just knew what we were trying to do. I found even as young as a year, explaining to her why she couldn't do/have something worked wonders. She just understood why and accepted it, such as the stove or hot items. Telling her simply no and trying to redirect her would only make her want to go explore it even more. But telling her no and explaining why she couldn't. "It's hot and you could hurt yourself", was enough to keep her away from it. We never had an incident where she touched a hot stove or heater.
I came to discover that most of the typical ways of dealing with a baby/toddler didn't work with my DD. We learned quickly that she was mentally more of a 4 or 5 year old by a year and treated her discipline in more of that age group with mostly taking the time to explain it to her. Made all of the difference for us and (knock on wood) we have never experienced the crazy tantrums that correspond with toddlers. DD is now 3 1/2 and we might still see a form of it but so far we have been really blessed.
