Two year olds are learning to be independent
this is sometimes a difficult time for parents because their child still needs
a lot of guidance.
"Do you want the blue one or orange one?" 2 year olds are not always able to explain what they need and may not know
what will happen if they do certain things. Parents need to guide their child
toward safe and positive choices. 2 year olds are just beginning to learn
how to control their emotions and deal with frustrations. When parents deal with
conflict in a calm way, they are showing their child how to do so. "Ok, say can I use the phone please." "Phone please", "Alright". With
some guidance two year olds can begin to learn how to solve small problems and how to
manage their frustrations.
By the time your toddler becomes to here she is, is learning now how to manage her
emotions much better. They're beginning to understand the idea that there are
actually some rules and some limits that have to be followed. They're now more
independent they have a stronger sense of themselves as a separate person from
from you their parent. And there are also much more verbal so they're able to express
themselves using words versus using just actions of their behavior. When
you are parenting a child as young as 2, you wanna be right in there with your
child, guiding their behavior, having lots of really rich conversations about the
world that they're seeing, what they're experiencing, how they're feeling about
it, also talking to them about behavior that's appropriate inappropriate. You're
starting to talk about things that are safe, things that are dangerous and
through those conversations and by spending time playing with your child
and being with your child you are actually influencing your child's
behavior through every interaction, your modeling for them and you're giving them
different strategies to actually interact with their environment.
Some parents might wonder why children even have temper tantrums. Why can't they
just come and tell them when they're upset. This area of development, the
ability to understand and then actually manage your emotions is one that takes
many many years to develop in in our brains so for that two-year-old when
those emotions are overwhelming there really lost they don't know what to do
and a temper tantrum is a default position for them it's their way of
shouting out to you or
anybody who's in their world I need some help with what I'm feeling, I don't know
what to do with it. If you get upset that is likely going to upset your child even
more and now it's going to be a more difficult situation to deal with. Often
children will have their temper tantrums in the most difficult of places for us
as parents, such as the grocery store and it is so tempting to just get upset and
tell them to stop
and I'm gonna really encourage parents to count to ten first and calm
yourself down and to to realize that by you being calm in that moment when your
child is not, your child is actually going to be able to move to that that
place of being calm much quicker. The next thing as you want to be there
physically close to your child to help them calm down. When a child has a temper
tantrum they're overwhelmed by what they're feeling. They need you to step in
and help them make sense of those emotions. So even though it's not the
best time, may not even be physically the best kind of space, get close to your
child to help them calm down and then have the conversation about what's
happened.
Some parents may be familiar with the concept of time out and I'm going to
suggest timeout is probably better replaced with time in. When a child
misbehaves putting them on a chair or in a separate room, asking them or
expecting them to think about what they did wrong, this is very very difficult
for most young children. They actually don't have the capacity to do this by
themselves, so instead of time out
shift this to time in. And when your child misbehaves you're actually gonna
move into a space with your child now have them calm down and begin to have
the conversation about what what happened, what did they do that was
inappropriate or created an issue what could they do differently, and you're
gonna help them think that through. Some parents might use time out in a very
threatening way, if you do that you're going to get a time out. I'm gonna
encourage parents to instead distract your child.
Talk about I know you want to do that but instead of doing that let's think about
something else that we can do. It's critical that you provide your child
with a routine every day. Knowing that when I wake up in the morning
I get up, I brush my teeth, I have my breakfast and I go to daycare, when I
come home I have a snack, I sit and read a book with mommy and then we get dinner
ready, this is important for a child. So making sure that these events are
happening in a predictable sequence and in the same sequence every day is really
going to help your child feel more secure and be able to project what comes
next. And now he knows what you're expecting from him next, which is also
important in terms of managing his behavior.
Let's take a look at what happens when this dad takes his little girl to the park.
"Alright we're going to the park." "Yeah". It's interesting that she is, she's so anxious and so
focused on just getting to the park that she's ready to run across the street.
"Niasky what do we do when we're crossing the street?" "Hold your hand"
"Yeah please hold my hand ok and we're going to look left." And dad is really
having to be patient and remind her repeatedly how important it is that she
hold his hand."and now we can cross the street but you have to hold my hands ok?"
"Look car is coming" "Ok so we're gonna cross, we're gonna cross." I love how this dad is so
responsive to his two-year-old she's clearly telling him that she doesn't
like the toys that he's put her on and she wants to get off. "You don't want to
try it? No you're not ready for it?"
"Ok". It's such an easy place for a parent to go to be persistent, let's keep
trying, oh let's try it this way and instead he just follows her lead and
moves on to the next activity. "Hold on tight, ok, don't let go." You can see
here how this little one is really using her language so well and dad is
hearing her, he is very responsive to the words that she's using. "Daddy too much". "It's too much ok ok ok, I'll stop it. I'll stop it. Are you
ok?" Then he is there right away to respond. "You are going to be a little dizzy." This is a very busy 2 year
old. She's very focused on just getting to what she wants to do. "Niasky look
at me for a second ok, please. Niasky please just look at me, ok. I'm gonna give you one
more minutes to play in the park and then we're going to go home for dinner.
Ok so what do you want to do for the last minute before we go?"
"I want to do the yellow. "You want to do the yellow? This one? ok go ahead". One of the strategies that dad
is using at this point is he says to her I need you to look at me and he waits to
give her the next conversation until she actually looks up and now he's made eye
contact with her. It's a way to help them calm down at a time when they're very
very excited. "So we're going to go home now, ok, ok? So the end of a
visit to the park can sometimes be challenging moment as well and certainly
for this little one she does not want to go home. "I don't want to go" "Actually you know what? Do you
want to chase me going home or do you want me to chase you?" "I want to chase you over there" "You want to chase me other there?" "yes" You are
sure. Ok chase me let's go".
And dad is quite creative and quickly comes up with a way to engage her in a
new activity that at the same time is actually gonna get them closer to home
and moving in the right direction and this gets her moving home pretty quickly.
So all in all really wonderful moment for this dad and this little girl. Parents
may find that they're seeing much more aggressive behavior from their
two-year-old which is pretty typical in terms of their development. They don't
have the language yet to actually expressed their emotion. So for them when
they're in a difficult situation using physical aggression hitting, biting,
pinching, is how they know to get their needs met or to get what they want but
when that is happening as a parent you need to step in immediately stop the
behavior remove the child still with the child and help the child to calm down so
that you can now help that child to find the words so that you can understand
what it is that he or she was feeling in that moment. Some parents may want to
revert to spanking their child when there's been inappropriate behavior,
misbehaving that's gone on, but you have to really think about if this is the
type of strategy you want to teach your child to use when things go wrong.
Because that's the message they get, when life isn't going right it's ok to get
abusive with others, that concept is actually gonna go with them into their
adulthood. It's going to influence how they parent as well. When instead you
stay calm and you have these conversations with your child about what
is appropriate, what's inappropriate, why you might be upset with their behavior
and how that can change. We're actually starting to build a foundation for a
child, a good working memory of how to solve challenging experiences and
challenging relationships throughout their life. Many people describe that
two-year-old stage as the terrible twos and I think that they're really it's an
exciting time. Part of that is because children are so much more verbal. So I
would encourage the parents of a two-year-old to
really look for every opportunity to talk with your child, to let them tell
you what they're feeling. How they're seeing the world.
Their interpretation of the things that are going on around them and be really
and truly engaged in those conversations with your child because each of those
conversations is a learning opportunity as a teachable moment for both that
child and for the parent. With your two-year-old remember that toddlers need
to develop their independence. Show your child how to solve problems calmly.
Provide age appropriate suggestions. Help your child learn to make decisions.
Acknowledge their positive behavior. Use natural consequences when it's
appropriate. Redirect challenging behavior towards acceptable activities.
And tried to maintain routines