Toddlers: Your Game Plan for the Terrific Twos
How to manage your toddler and stay a positive parent?
Most children become harder to manage by fourteen months. This can be a maddening time for parents, or it can be
a 
wonderful time, watching your child blossom into a person in her own
right. How difficult the phase from 15 to
36 months is depends mostly on the parent's attitude. Your child's rebellion
will be inversely proportional to the freedom she’s given to do her
developmental work.
How much is he allowed to explore? To set his own pace? To feel in control of his world? To discover that he is a competent person?
Much of this depends on the parent. Are you sensitive to your child's readiness for independence, supporting but not pushing? Can you appreciate your child's bids for independence without taking them as personal insults? Can you give up some control so your child can develop some sense of mastery over her world?
Your Toddler's Developmental Tasks:
Rapid physical and brain development
Rapid acquisition of vocabulary and verbal rules
Learning how to stay connected to you while he becomes himself.
Development of Agency (sense of oneself as a powerful, competent person able to act upon the world).
Your Parenting Challenge:
Keeping your sanity while your baby grows into her own person.
Your Parenting Priorities:
1. Keeping your child safe as she explores.
2. Giving up some control so he can develop some mastery over his world.
3. Enjoying her emerging independence and curiosity.
4. Staying positive!
"The first three years of life establishes the blueprints for all of our future relationships." -- John Bowlby
What toddlers need from their parents:
1. The validation of her own agency. She needs to learn that
there are things she is in charge of, such as her own body, and she
needs to experience herself as competent and powerful.
2. Structure, Limits, Routines and Security:
Toddlers are beginning to grasp that it's a big world out there. Even
their own feelings seem overwhelming to them at times. They need the
reassurance that the parent is in charge and can keep them safe --
from the world, and from their own big feelings and lack of self
control.
3. Help understanding and structuring time
so he feels less out of control and pummeled by circumstance ("After
lunch it's nap time, and then we'll drive to Grandma's.") Toddlers need
to know what to expect and do better with a definite routine.
4. Your empathy: Look at it from his point of view, and you'll see it makes sense. Even if you can't do what he wants, it will help him to cooperate if you can understand and sympathize with his unhappiness.
Gameplan for a Fun Toddlerhood:
1. Let your child be in charge of potty training. They
all get out of diapers sooner or later. Fights with your child about
his or her body are fights you will never win. Toilet training can
actually be empowering for your child, an important step in
independence, but it depends how you handle it. "Potty Break" by Tracey Clark
on the MomsRising web site is a great article on this. If your child
shows zero interest in toilet training, find opportunities for him to
be around other kids who are using the toilet, and he'll quickly want
to emulate them. For more on easy potty training, click here.
2. Sidestep power struggles.
You don't have to prove you're right. Your child is trying to assert
that he is a real person, with some real power in the world. That's
totally appropriate. Let him say no whenever you can do so without
compromise to safety, health, or other peoples' rights. You'll be glad
to know that since tantrums are an expression of powerlessness,
toddlers who feel some control over their lives have many fewer
tantrums.
3. Pre-empt tantrums.
First, know that tantrums are normal for kids this age. Second, since
most tantrums happen when kids are hungry or tired, think ahead.
Preemptive feeding and napping, firm bedtimes, enforced rests, cozy
times, peaceful quiet time without media stimulation -- whatever it
takes to calm down and rest -- prevent most tantrums, and reground
kids who are getting whiny. Learn to just say no -- to yourself!
Don't squeeze in that last errand. Don't drag a hungry or tired kid to
the store. Make do and do it tomorrow. For more on taming toddler tantrums, click here.
4. Use play to "manage" your toddler. Toddlers don't like to be ordered around any more than you do. What they do love is to play. Want cooperation? Fly your toddler up to her bath. Get him to finish his milk by pretending to be a puppy who loves milk. Get her into her carseat by pretending to be the flight attendant preparing for takeoff. Race him to the car.
5. Don’t take it personally. Your toddler will at times reject you or be hurtful in some way. Don’t take it personally. She’s learning from you how to modulate her anger. This is your opportunity to grow, and teach her at the same time.
6. Allow time in your schedule for your toddler's need to explore the world. Rushing toddlers is one of the common triggers of avoidable tantrums.
7. Cultivate empathy for your child.
Social skills start with your empathy. Kids begin to develop empathy
for others (and therefore, the ability to share, not hit, etc.) as they
themselves feel understood. Click here for more on what empathy is and how to use it to raise great kids.
8. Don't force her to share. Instead, encourage taking turns. Let her put her favorite toys away before another child visits.
9. Use age-appropriate discipline.
For toddlers, that means distraction, reasonable limits, redirection.
This is where violence starts: Are you unwittingly teaching your kids
that might makes right? (If discipline is an issue for you, see Positive Discipline, for help in managing your toddler.
10. Be the person you want your child to be.
Children learn to interact with others by experiencing relationships,
and then they recreate them. Remember that your toddler is learning
both sides of any relationship she’s in. If you don’t want her to
tantrum, don’t lose your temper at her. If you yell at her, you're
teaching her by example that tantrums are ok.
11. Eliminate visual electronic media. The
American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age
of two not watch TV or videos at all because they have other important
developmental work to do and because it impacts brain development. The
AAP recommends that older children watch AT MOST an hour or two per day
of nonviolent, educational TV. I recommend TV and movies only for special occasions.
I know we’re told that Sesame Street is good for our children, but it
creates a watcher, not a doer. It starts an addiction in kids who are
prone to it. When they’re a little older, they'll want to watch other
TV. And before they’re much older, you'll wonder why they flip on the
TV instead of reading a book. Not to mention that you will have stopped
being able to monitor what they watch by the time they’re eight. For more on TV, see Why Your Toddler Shouldn't Watch TV -- and What to Do Instead.
12. Feeding is the toddler’s job.
You provide the healthy food. She feeds it to herself. Put a mat
under the high chair. Don’t obsess about how much she eats. Kids
don't starve themselves. Many toddlers are too busy during the day to
eat enough and ask for food at bedtime. This can drive a parent around
the bend, unless you build a bedtime snack into the schedule – which
also often helps kids settle down and sleep better. You can combine it
with the bedtime story if you’re short on time. Click here for more on feeding your toddler.
13. Forget about stimulating your child's brain by teaching her the alphabet.
The intellectual work of toddlers is about talking and being listened
to, observing the world, being accepted, validated and acknowledged.
Emotional self-management lays the foundation for intellectual
development. It's never too early to develop a love of books, but that
doesn’t happen by learning the alphabet. If you want your child to
love reading, then read to her and tell her stories.
14. Pre-empt whining.
Whining is an expression of the child's feeling of powerlessness. It
can become a habit. To nip whining in the bud, avoid letting your
child have opportunities to learn that whining gets her what she
wants. In other words, try to avoid making whining necessary, and if
it does happen, try to avoid rewarding it. Click here for more on how to stop your toddler's whining.
15. Use routines. Kids develop self discipline partly by living in a safe, predictable structured routine where they know what to expect. When you disrupt routines with travel, Grandma’s visit, or simply exceptions for your own convenience, you can expect tantrums, difficulty falling asleep, and other challenges. Grandma, of course, is worth it, but choosing disruptions wisely is part of protective parenting. Click here for more on schedules and routines.
16. Give her the opportunity to experience competence.
Toddlers tantrum less and cooperate more when they feel more powerful.
How can you help your toddler feel more powerful? Three key ways:
Listen to her, Let her make decisions whenever possible, and give her
the opportunity to experience competence.
Toddlers need daily
experience with work to gain confidence in their own capabilities and
begin to think of themselves as competent people. I don’t mean
burdensome work, I mean work in the spirit of Maria Montessori, and Tom
Sawyer making the other kids think that white-washing the fence was the
world’s best game.
Start with household tasks, not because they
can really help you at this point, but because they gain skills for the
future, because it's what you are engaged in anyway so you can help
them and bond over the task, and because toddlers see these daily tasks
as important work, so they take them seriously.
What kinds of household tasks? Making themselves a snack, such as peeling fruit or an egg, or slicing soft cheese and making sandwiches with crackers. Helping wash pots and pans or other unbreakable dishes. Pairing the socks as you fold clothes. Picking out fruit at the grocery store. Washing the table or floor. These activities are ultimately more educational and satisfying than TV, and lots of kids love them. The end result? After completing such a task, the toddler says "I did it!" and feels like a more capable, powerful person. (Compare that to how they feel after they watch a TV show.)
Click here for more on helping your child develop Competence.
