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July 10, 2021 - February 2, 2022
Your average three-year-old is wildly different from just a year ago. With individuation, he is fumbling to find out how he is separate from you. He is entering deep play, which often looks like not listening. He is gaining mastery over his physical abilities and really needs to test the limits of what his little body can do. He doesn’t want to be a baby anymore but he still needs a lot of help. He doesn’t want to be told what to do, yet he still needs direction.
Getting dressed. At three years old and definitely by four, your child should be able to dress himself.
Choosing clothes. Let them choose their own, fashion be damned.
Helping with meals. Kids should absolutely be helping at mealtime: setting and clearing the table, laying out napkins, getting things out of the fridge. Preschoolers are totally capable of making their own sandwiches.
Pouring a drink. They are fully capable of pouring liquids into glasses. This sometimes requires your putting fluids in a smaller, more manageable container;
Light chores. Most kids adore cleaning the toilet. I know. Weird, right? Let them! Light vacuuming, making beds, folding laundry (badly, but still), putting their clothes away, filling their own water bottles are just a few ideas.
Helping with chores and mealtimes is more than just a life skill. It’s a powerful reminder that your little one is part of a big something—a family. They are not separate and special, they are one of a whole. Remember: when we feel part of a tribe, we are more likely to behave in a way that keeps us there, rather than behaving in a way that gets us kicked out. I cannot overstate how valuable this lesson is. When children are within the center of your home and life, they feel loved and safe. When we make them the center of the home and life, things get off-kilter.
When we attend to the whole child, the whole brain, the whole body, we are working with the grain of this developmental stage.
Play is the basis of all later academics. Marble runs and Matchbox car ramps are absolute studies in physics.
They are learning. They are always learning through play, and the play they gravitate toward will build the skills they need and want.
Our guiding question should be “What can our children do for themselves?”
Pull away from the notion that formal education is important at this age. We have an epidemic of kids who are having meltdowns and crazy behavior when it does become time to sit still later, like in first and second grade. Sensory problems are at an all-time high, largely because we’re doing things in the wrong order. We aren’t letting kids build the foundation they need to have the capability to sit and focus. We are rushing academics, and the frustration it’s building is explosive. We aren’t letting learning blossom but rather we’re forcing it.
Executive functioning is now a buzzword in the formal school years, mostly because our children seem to show an all-time low of executive function skills. It is formally defined as “a set of processes that all have to do with managing oneself and one’s resources in order to achieve a goal. It is an umbrella term for the neurologically-based skills involving mental control and self-regulation.” The three main areas of executive function are • Working memory • Cognitive flexibility (also called flexible thinking) • Inhibitory control (which includes self-control)
Ever wonder why your little one can’t just go put on his freaking shoes? Because he drifts. He doesn’t know how to organize information in a way that gets him to a specific goal. He doesn’t know yet how to prioritize and execute the task necessary to get there. Understanding our little one’s inability to do this will go a long way in helping.
We can help build executive functioning through games and real life. First, try to understand where the communication glitch is. It’s usually wherever you find yourself repeating something over and over. Next, break down the task: What am I asking her to do? What are the actual steps involved in doing this task? And last, am I saying it in the order it’s most effectively done?
A crucial learned skill that we don’t even think about is hearing and processing words in order. Kids don’t always have that yet. That explains why we get so frustrated with our little cherubs when they are taking an insane amount of time to do one simple thing.
What can you do about it besides wait? You can start by slowing down your thinking a lot. Try getting on toddler time. It does take practice but will soon become second nature to both you and your child. The next question is, How can we help our kids learn to break down tasks into the right steps in the right order?
Ordering tasks for your child will go a long way in helping them develop executive function skills.
helping your children break down the steps in any given task makes it much more likely that they can complete that task.
This is how self-esteem is fostered—not by mindlessly praising our kids for the smallest things but by giving them the skills to handle tasks on their own.
In games and all your interactions with your child, remember to slow down. If your child looks lost and distracted, it’s because he is not processing the information as fast as you. Slow it down. Break it into easier, more sequential tasks.
Yes. There is such a thing as talking too much. We were told to narrate our day to our children, to help build language and understanding. And because we’re parents and we’re always trying to do not only well but always better, we took it too far. And of course, that push to be “educational” reared its head here as well. Our children’s minds aren’t empty vessels that we just pour information into. That’s not how learning works. They are watching, listening, soaking in feelings, nonverbal communication, sights, sounds, tastes. And yet we sometimes think we constantly have to pour in that
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Again: railroading the child’s experience. This type of chatter leaves the child no room to utilize all his own senses. Kids will start tuning you out. So they can hear themselves.
it becomes vital to let children have their own experience of the world around them. To expose them, yes. To talk some, yes! Absolutely. I’m not suggesting we don’t talk and teach our children. But we may be completely eclipsing something they see, some chatter in their heads by attempting to put words in there. We need to leave room in their minds for their unique formulation of information.
As you can see, from three on, your words about your experience matter less as your child searches for his own meaning, his own words, his own sensory experience. If you find that your three-year-old is arguing the color of the sky, it’s a good indicator that she would like more input into your conversations, using her own experience. Most parents look at this behavior as purely argumentative. But it’s not! It’s your child saying, Hey! I have an opinion on this! I want to say something! I want to figure it out. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it mine? And that’s the super important part.
The opposition you may be seeing in your little one isn’t always just him being silly (though sometimes, sure) and it’s not always him being a jerk (though sometimes, sure); it’s him claiming his experience. We have to make room for that.
Are you talking at your child or are you talking with your child? If you are narrating what you are doing, you are most likely talking at your child.
That teacher voice is almost always talking at your child. At best, your child stops listening. At worst, you’re disconnecting and your little one will rebel. Our kids need to feel connected. When they don’t, they will act out until they get that.
I like to think in terms of less “I will teach you everything I know” and more “I will engage with you about your experience.”
Think engagement and connection, rather than educational content. This is a level of conscious parenting that most people won’t think about. Connection means really seeing the little person in front of you, not just being a mistake monitor or talking at your child. Remember, a kid who feels connected wants to behave well, wants to be part of your little village, wants to do the things that keep her there, loved and secure.
Creativity is not just for artists! It’s flexible thinking, original ways to approach problems and solutions; it’s the future and new ideas.
Kids are so new to the world and they blow me away with their thinking because they don’t have a preconceived notion of what or how anything should be. Which is why they do things that make our heads explode sometimes. Anytime you’ve thought, “Why would you do that?” creativity is at play.
How do we cultivate creativity, then? I think that in broad strokes, it comes down to expecting no set outcome.
As a culture we are obsessed with production and performance. We want quantifiable results; we love having something to show for our work. This is fine and acceptable in some circumstances, but with our kids, it’s not the way to foster growth and independence. While following exact directions so everyone gets the same results is useful at times, there are pockets in our lives where we want the opposite. Expression and individuality are vital to young minds that may not always have an outlet for that. That’s why we have art. To create and expand our inner and outer worlds. To use color and form
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art is about process, not product.
Sometimes we not only stymie the expression but we stymie the control. Art is the perfect place to give your child that power wand. To let him control his own experience, instead of hovering and trying to control the situation. It’s kind of mind-blowing, isn’t it?
First and foremost, you have to let go of the fear of mess. Real expression, true art, and letting go of control means there will be messes. Create space for that in your home. I promise the rewards will be greater than the mess. Have plenty of varied supplies, not just the standard construction paper and crayons. As your child grows, don’t be lulled into “kid art supplies.”
Think learning versus education.
Use these early years to foster creativity. To learn about failure and mistakes and flubbing things wildly. We need to chill, guys. We’re quick to try to help them “get ahead” with educational material. But exploration is key at this age.
The technical definition of proprioception is “the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself.
The vestibular sense contributes to our ability to maintain balance and body posture. In addition to maintaining balance, the vestibular system collects information critical for controlling movement and the reflexes that move various parts of our bodies to compensate for changes in body position.
In the first five years of life, the foundation is being laid for everything, mental, physical, and emotional. Our kids are constantly seeking sensory feedback because it’s how they learn. However, there’s a disturbing trend happening. I trace it back to what I call the “Be Careful Culture” and the “Be Kind Culture.”
when we are constantly cautioning our kids to be careful and limiting their physical play, we are squelching those “stimuli that arise in the body itself.” And that can have explosive ramifications. Literally. It can cause explosive behavior. If children are seeking some physical sensory feedback as to what their bodies can do and we limit that, it doesn’t just go away. In comes out in other ways, like in really crappy behavior.
Children who get lots of Big Play end up sitting still better when it’s time to sit. They listen better. They don’t fidget as much and get so wiggly and obnoxious and annoying. They sleep better because they’ve have this whole-body, exhausting movement. They also develop strong core muscles and terrific gross motor skills.
Know that this Big Play is not just about momentary relief for you. It’s the foundation of being able to sit and focus, write and read, have tolerance for sitting still in the later years.
What are some real-life examples of Big Play? In broad terms, any swinging, climbing, or jumping. These all give amazing amounts of vestibular input.
The classics Here are some classic activities for building vestibular movement and proprioception: • Rolling down grassy hills • Rolling on the floor like a log • Sit-and-spins • Hippity-hop balls • Merry-go-rounds (the old-school kind)
Taking risks means sometimes failing. I want you to really sit with this for a minute because this truth is huge not just for this age but for an entire healthy childhood and beyond. If you never take a risk, if you play it safe all the time, you become afraid of making a mistake. You become afraid of failure. The ramifications of this core attitude affect people throughout their entire lives.
If a childhood is spent being careful, never being allowed to take a risk, it’s not as if suddenly at age eighteen that child will go out into the world and be a risk-taker. In fact, the opposite happens.
For the zero-to-six age range, learning to take risks, learning to handle failure starts with physicality. Risky physicality means potentially getting hurt. To hover over a child, making sure she never makes a mistake, fails, or falls, is to create a mess later on in life.
