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Toddlerhood is the perfect time to hone parenting skills that will provide the honest, direct, and compassionate leadership our children will depend on for years to come. Here are some
Lectures, emotional reactions, scolding, and punishments do not give our toddler the clarity he needs and can create guilt and shame. A simple, matter-of-fact, “I won’t let you do that. If you throw that again I will need to take it away,” while blocking the behavior with our hands, is the best response.
If a child misbehaves in a public situation, the child is usually indicating he’s tired, losing control, and needs to leave.
Loving our child does not mean keeping him happy all the time and avoiding power struggles. Often it is doing what feels hardest for us to do: saying “no” and meaning it.
Our children deserve our direct, honest responses so they can internalize right and wrong and develop the authentic self-discipline needed to respect and be respected by others. As Magda wrote in Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect: “The goal is inner-discipline, self-confidence and joy in the act of cooperation.”
Rule #1: Never, ever take a child’s limit-pushing behavior personally.
Respecting children means understanding their stage of development, not reacting to their age-appropriate behavior as if they are our peers.
don’t want you to hit. I think you’re letting me know you’re tired and ready to go home, right?”
“Sorry, B, I told you we would leave and then started talking. Thanks for reminding me we need to go.”
Apparently all is fair when it comes to love, war, and toddlers.
Our responses will obviously vary from situation to situation, but they should consistently demonstrate that we’re totally unthreatened by their behavior, that we can handle it, and that it’s no big deal at
I would dis-empower those behaviors by allowing them to roll-l-l off my back. Perhaps I’d acknowledge, “I hear how angry you are about leaving the park. That really disappointed you.” Always, always, always encourage your child to express these feelings. Again, testing us with these behaviors from time to time is age-appropriate, and if we react, we may encourage this to continue.
4. Do I have capable leaders? Imagine how disconcerting it is to be two, three, or four years old and not be certain we have a stable leader. The most effective leaders lead with confidence, keep their sense of humor, and make it look easy. This takes practice but — not to worry —
“Know what’s important, both for you and for the child. If you are not clear, the child’s opposition will persist, which will make you, the parent, even angrier. This in turn highlights the conflict that exists already, leading to an unhappy situation combining anger, guilt, and fear. A child has a difficult time growing up with ambivalent parents.”
“Audrey, I hear you asking for our attention. When Daddy and I are finished talking I am going to listen only to you.
Our needs matter, too. Parenting is about developing a relationship with another person. We make many worthwhile sacrifices when we are raising children, but it’s best to not subjugate all our needs to keep our child happy, because a) doing so makes us feel unhappy and resentful; and b) it
“You’re upset about how long I’m taking in the kitchen.” “You don’t want me to go.”
Children are also more inclined to listen to “no” when we don’t say it all the time.
Toddlers are definitely capable of cooperating, but they need to be taught through respectful feedback, corrections, and modeling rather than being tricked, manipulated, or coerced.
Remembering to say, “Wow, you can reach that now!” or “Look at the leaf you found,” before adding “but this isn’t safe for you to touch (or put in your mouth).
Sometimes, we need the self-discipline to know when to hold our breath and bite our tongue.
“I won’t let you hit.” Or, right after the strike, a parent might simply say, “I don’t want you to hit.”
When children act out, I imagine them holding up little red flags that say: “Help!”; “Stop me!”; “Rein me in!”; or “Parent me!”
In their hearts, however, children sense when a parent is working ardently to provide a safe nest and real love.
The secret to enlisting our children’s cooperation is the same for all aspects of successful parenting: respect. Newborns, infants, toddlers, and preschoolers — people of all ages — want to be engaged with, included, and invited to participate rather than have things done to them. Who can blame us? Here are some key ways to offer respect:
“I need to wipe your nose with this tissue. Please keep your head still for a moment.”
“Would you like to take your medicine now or after lunch?” “Which fingernail shall we clip first?”
6. Don’t multitask. Children need our undivided attention during these cooperative activities. Pay attention, connect, and encourage children to do the same.
“You are turning your head away. You don’t want me to dry your nose with the tissue. I’ll wait a little for you to be ready.” When, despite our respectful attitude, children refuse to cooperate and we must force the (t)issue, it’s even more crucial that we acknowledge their disagreement or anger: “You didn’t like that. It upset you.”
An aware child may be less convenient sometimes (when we can’t trick him with sleight of hand,
Distract and divert. The best form of toddler discipline is redirection. First, you have to distract them from their original intention and then, quickly divert them
Recognize achievement and encourage curiosity. The use of distraction as redirection reflects our natural tendency to want to put an immediate end to a child’s undesirable behavior. And in our haste, it’s easy to forget to recognize and encourage positives in the situation – positives like inventiveness, achievement, curiosity. When the situation isn’t an emergency, we can take a moment to acknowledge: “Wow, you reached all the way up to the counter and picked up my sunglasses!”
Dealing with these situations openly with patience, empathy, and honesty — braving a child’s tears and accepting temporary ‘bad guy’ status — is the path to a loving relationship, trust, and respect. This, believe it or not, is real quality time.
Our behavior control tactics (usually applied with a dose of anger or frustration) can make our children uncomfortable, confused, and even fearful, and this is manifested in their increasingly erratic behavior.
Be my gentle leader and help me feel safe again.
Once we’ve understood that our words are not enough for most young children (and how difficult it is for them to understand and express their needs), we see the ridiculousness of taking their refusals to follow our verbal directions personally. It’s on us to make our expectations clear by following through with firm, but gentle actions.
When we project calm, our children usually release their upset feelings quickly and feel free to move on.
Which reminds me of a parenting rule of thumb: Fear (or even slight reticence) about upsetting, disappointing, or angering our children will cloud our vision and negatively affect our judgment.
“A parent’s ambivalence, guilt feelings, and areas of confusion in his or her role will be picked up and used amazingly fast by young children. They seem to have a sixth sense for it. Any ambivalence from a parent will produce a nagging response.”
So, our job is to be a solid leader who can remain calm and empathetic in the face of our child’s storms and not waver, get angry or pitying, or take his or her feelings personally.
Always acknowledge the feelings, no matter how overly dramatic or inappropriate they might seem.
One of the many mountains of things I treasure about young children is the total communion they have with time being relative. Kids lose themselves in time all the time and can inspire us to release ourselves from clocks, slow down, and join them. Why hurry children to learn the meaning of time when ignorance is such bliss?
During the toddler years, our most reasonable expectation is the unreasonable. Expecting the madness makes it far easier to keep our cool.
It means we won’t ask more than once, because that is a quick path to our annoyance and anger, and whenever the situation allows, we’ll ask
Remember that toddlers need to disagree to claim their new, more independent place in the world. In the toddler code book, compliance means weakness.
Don’t anticipate willingness, and you won’t be disappointed.
Recognition is the first step toward change, and changing old patterns of response for the sake of our children is profoundly healing.
Let your children be the inspiration to get the help you need.
also know that staying calm and centered in the face of even the darkest of my children’s emotions is imperative to their well-being. My boat is easily rocked. I can lose perspective, and rather than giving my kids the solid support for their feelings or the behavior limits they need during a tantrum, I can end up losing patience, melting, second-guessing myself, getting mad or frustrated, yelling, and generally doing things that not only don’t work, but also create problems that make matters worse. When we lose our cool, most of what we say or do is completely lost on our children. All they
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