What to Expect the Toddler Years (24 page)

Commend compliance. When your toddler does take “no” for an answer—even if it’s only one time out of fifty—be ready to acknowledge his compliance (“Thank you for putting that magazine down when I asked”).

“Whenever I try to feed my daughter, she clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head. But I can’t let her feed herself because she makes such a mess and takes forever.”

Get that bullet and start biting. Yes, it’s painful to watch a toddler feeding herself—and the floor, the wall, her clothes—and taking three times as long to get through a meal as when you’re in charge of the spoon. But this, like so many aspects of toddler rearing, is a case of no pain, no gain. And the gains to be made here are important ones for your child, bringing her, among other positive rewards, independence, self-feeding skills, and a healthy attitude toward mealtime and eating. Continue feeding your toddler yourself, and you’ll save time and a lot of cleaning up but deny her these valuable gains. Fight with her for
control over the spoon, and you could set the stage for a future of eating problems.

So leave yourself some extra time for her meals, lay out some extra protection for your floor, and look the other way if you can’t bear to watch—but let your toddler feed herself. See the tips on page 17 for how to make the mealtime mess less messy.

“My son goes around the house emptying everything he sees—drawers, wastebaskets, toy bins. But I can’t get him to put anything back.”

It’s Mother Nature’s perverse sense of humor at work again: slotting the capability to “empty out” months before the capability (and years before the desire) to “put back in.” But emptying isn’t a laughing matter to your toddler—it’s serious developmental work.

How can you help your toddler polish this important fine-motor skill without his demolishing your home? Try these tips for starters:

Prevent dangerous emptying.
Install childproof locks on cabinets, drawers, and closets that contain items that might harm your toddler or be harmed by him (cleaning fluids, dish detergents, knives, matches, scissors, glass, china, and other breakables). Since it will be a long time before your toddler can control his impulse to touch the forbidden, it’s up to you to make sure these objects are completely inaccessible to him. See page 620 for tips on childproofing your home.

Provide opportunities for safe emptying.
Make available for your toddler’s emptying pleasure boxes filled with fabric scraps of bright colors and textures (velvet, silk, mesh, burlap), but no strings or ribbons (which he might choke himself with); baskets of toys; drawers filled with old pots and covers, wooden spoons, measuring cups that nest; low shelves filled with hard-to-destroy board books. Stock the bathtub and the sandbox with plastic cups, bottles, and pails for your child to fill and empty to his heart’s content.

Play the “putting-in” game.
Begin trying to teach your toddler how to “put back in” as well as take out: “You put that toy in the toy box, I’ll put this one in” or “Let’s see who can fill a basket faster!” Don’t expect your toddler to put back with the same diligence he applies to emptying; filling is a much tougher skill, and much less satisfying, too. In fact, even if your toddler does learn to enjoy filling, he’ll probably still—to your frustration—end up most play sessions by emptying (empty, refill, empty). Of course, there’s the occasional toddler who likes “putting in” so much that Mom finds her car keys in the sock drawer and Dad finds his wallet in the trash bin.

If your toddler doesn’t get the hang of putting back in what he empties (or doesn’t seem to want to), don’t prod, pressure, or punish. Try to keep in mind that emptying is a learning experience for him, even though it’s a trying one for you. But to keep chaos under control, and to make clear to your toddler that it’s not okay to empty endlessly all over the house, you can refill the container in question and either put it or him out of reaching range.

Provide reasons.
This won’t work until your toddler is at least eighteen months or so, when his comprehension improves. At that age, whenever he dumps a drawer or clears out a cabinet, leaving the contents strewn across the carpet, point out the disadvantages of the mess he’s created: one, that people can trip over it; two, that people can step on things and break them; three,
that the house looks much nicer when everything’s in its proper place. None of this is likely to stop your child from emptying or start him putting back everything he empties—at least not anytime soon. But it will plant in his mind the idea that your rules against emptying aren’t arbitrary, they have sound reasons behind them.

“My daughter gets enormous pleasure from dropping things—from her crib, her high chair, the supermarket cart. And she seems to get even more of a kick from watching me pick them up.”

When first we saw this behavior, late in the first year, it was a sign that baby had developed enough control over her fingers to release objects she picked up; and as with any other skill, she probably practiced it repeatedly just so she could get it right. She had no interest in what happened to the object once it left her pudgy hands. Then, as she got older, dropping became a scientific experiment: “What happens when I drop this? Where will it go?” Like a junior Isaac Newton, she watched the object fall all the way to the ground, fascinated. She was fascinated still more if it broke on impact.

Eventually many toddlers find entertainment value in the dropping skill—as your daughter seems to have. Rapid firing of stuffed animals over the side of your crib or peas from your high chair can be quite a hoot. Watching grown-ups bend over repeatedly to pick up what you’ve dropped automatically doubles the amusement.

What amuses your toddler, however, can exasperate you, not to mention being hard on your back and knees. Since numerous other less-annoying routes to amusement are at your toddler’s disposal, it’s best to encourage her to drop the dropping by taking the following steps:

Drop the complaints.
For the average toddler, knowing that a particular behavior irks her parents gives her greater motivation to repeat it—and repeat it. So instead of growling about her dropping, pretend that it doesn’t bother you in the least.

Floor her.
Whenever she’s in the mood to drop, and you’re not in the mood to pick up, put her on the floor so she can drop
and pick up
to her heart’s content. Of course, you can be pretty sure she will abandon the activity entirely once she’s on the floor.

End the meal.
If it’s food she’s flinging, take it away and bring the meal to a quick close.

Encourage a drop in the bucket.
Let your toddler practice her dropping skills in parent-approved situations and receptacles—drop a block into a bucket, a ball down a slide, a letter down the mail chute, toys into a toy chest, raisins into the cookie batter, and so on.

Play the pick-up game.
Picking up will never be as much fun as dropping (except, of course, when it’s interesting trash she’s spied on the sidewalk), but playing a pick-up game may make it less tedious. (For example, “Let’s see how fast we can pick up the toys you dropped” or “Can you pick up all those blocks before the music stops?”)

Beware of breakables.
Perhaps it should go without saying, but we’ll say it just the same: Those in the habit of dropping things should not be trusted with breakables. No glass, ceramic, or china dishes or cups at mealtime, no delicate knickknacks, or anything else you
would like to remain whole, should be left within your toddler’s reach.

“Our daughter doesn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes on anything.”

Sounds like you have a typical toddler—with a normally short attention span—on your hands. Because a few minutes can seem like an eternity to them, toddlers rarely spend more than a few minutes on anything. In an effort to cover all the ground they can, these pint-size explorers flit endlessly from one pursuit to another. Expecting a fourteen-month-old to concentrate for long periods of time on any one thing—a toy, a puzzle, a book, or an exhibit at a museum—is expecting too much. Like her meals, she’ll digest life’s experiences better if you let her take them in small bites.

This is not to say that your toddler won’t occasionally surprise you by becoming thoroughly engrossed in a single activity. She will, with greater frequency as the months pass and her attention span lengthens. But realistically, it’s not until they reach school age (about six years old) that most children develop the ability to concentrate on one project for a long period, shutting out all other stimuli or distractions (see page 170).

“Our daughter is walking all over the place now, but I’m concerned that she’s bowlegged.”

Just about every novice walker has a major gap between the knees, though the size of the gap varies from child to child. As long as your toddler is getting vitamin D from milk or from a supplement (a deficiency in this vitamin can lead to rickets and permanent bowing of the legs), you can assume that her bow-legs are just part of normal development. By the time she toddles into her second birthday party, the bowing will probably have disappeared completely—to be replaced by, if she follows the traditional pattern, knock-knees (see page 322).

If, however, the bowing is severe enough to interfere with her walking, is more pronounced on one side than on the other, or worsens after age two, check with the nurse-practitioner or doctor. Also seek medical advice if the bowing is extreme and your child ranks below the 25th percentile on the height chart for her age (see pages 862 to 863).

Not to worry—a toddler’s legs are normally bowed until sometime late in the second year. Toeing-out and flat feet are also common in toddlers.

“My son, who has been walking for a few weeks now, walks like a bowlegged duck, with his toes pointing out. Is this normal?”

Not only normal, but for most fledgling walkers, necessary. By pointing their toes outward, toddlers improve their balance, and thus their staying-up power (even adults tend to broaden their stance and point out when trying to maintain balance). Pointing out also helps compensate for normal toddler bowleggedness.

Between two and three, children graduate from bowlegs to knock-knees. In an effort once again to maintain balance, they shift the position of their feet to compensate, toeing-in instead of out. At this stage they begin to walk less like ducks and more like pigeons.

By the time they hit school age, most children walk with their feet pointing straight ahead, or almost so. A small number, however, will continue to toe-out for the rest of their lives, almost always without a problem.

“Both my wife and I have normal arches, but our fourteen-month-old son seems to be completely flat-footed. We’re worried this could be a problem.”

Don’t worry. Your child will almost certainly follow in your foot shape, though probably not for a couple of years at least. In infancy and toddler-hood, flat-footedness is the rule, not the exception. Your toddler’s feet are just doing what comes naturally.

There are several reasons toddlers appear flat-footed. For one, bones and joints, including those in the feet, are very flexible in early childhood. For another, the supporting muscles of the foot are not fully developed; it takes a lot of walking, a lot more walking than most toddlers have done, for these to tighten up. The toddler’s own weight pushes the loose joints and the weak muscles toward the ground, making the arch disappear. Yet another factor is the baby-fat pad that rounds the arch during this time of life, effectively camouflaging any curve that does exist. And finally, the fact that most beginning walkers toe out to improve their balance putting extra weight on the arch, and causing even a slightly elevated arch to appear flat.