What to Expect the Toddler Years (144 page)

Even when a toddler’s reasons for not listening are innocent, being tuned out can be frustrating. To help open your toddler’s ears to what you’ve got to say:

Listen to
him.
Parents often don’t realize how many times a day they tune out their children. True, what your toddler is saying may not always seem of the utmost importance to you, but it is always important to him. And with his limited powers of self-expression, being ignored is even more frustrating to him than it is to you. He’s small; not being heard makes him feel even smaller. Try to always lend him an ear when he asks for it and he is more likely to show you the same courtesy.

Be realistic.
Parents often issue commands their toddlers don’t understand. Or they issue too many at once—the average toddler at this age can handle only two at a time. Or they ask for the impossible: “Hang up your towel!” when a toddler can’t reach the towel rod. Or “Put those toys away!” when the child hasn’t any idea where or how to begin. Teach the skill before expecting compliance.

Make contact.
Don’t call from the other side of the room or with your back turned. Walk right up to your toddler and look him square in the eye when you speak. If necessary, kneel down so you’re on same level.

Keep it short and relatively sweet.
Your toddler’s attention span is limited. Say what you want to say in a few clear and simple words and you’re more likely to be heard.

Get physical.
If words don’t get a response, catch your toddler’s attention another way. He’s not listening to your warning to stay away from the DVR? Pick him up, move him to another room, and distract him with another activity. He fails to respond to your invitation to lunch? Separate him from his playthings: Pick him up and take him to the table. He’s hurting someone or could hurt himself? Intervene immediately.

Let your toddler know via body language, tone, and expression that you mean business, but try to remain friendly. Don’t drag him away from what he’s doing—unless such an action is necessitated by his kicking and screaming. Rather, pick him up with an, “Oops, I don’t think you heard me. It’s time for lunch. Tell the trucks you’ll see them later. If you like, you can take one with you to the table.”

Cheer when your toddler
does
listen
. Listening, in fact, should get much more attention than not listening: “You got up for lunch the minute I called. I really liked that. Thank you.”

“I know I should let my daughter make more of her own decisions, but she always makes such inappropriate choices.”

Nobody—not corporate CEOs, not powerful politicians, not influential financiers—is called on to make more (or tougher) decisions than a parent. But possibly the toughest decision of all is deciding whether, when, and how often to let a child make her own decisions.

Letting children make choices is a little scary, especially during the toddler years, when they’re still short on experience and judgment and long on eccentricities—and when so many decisions may be (at least in the parental view) “wrong.” Yet having the opportunity to make decisions is essential to a child’s development—an important part of growing up. Children who are brought up in a home where parents make all the choices are unlikely to develop the skills needed to help them make responsible decisions on their own. Later, when they’re away from home—whether for an afternoon at a friend’s house, a day at school, or a year at college—and face difficult choices (Should I cheat on a test? Smoke a cigarette? Drink and drive?), they often make poor ones, or let others make the choices for them.

Giving your child decision-making opportunities will provide a sense of control now and set her on the road to becoming a wise decision-maker later—though you can expect that, at first, many of her decisions will be far from sage.

When involving toddlers in decision making, however, there are some caveats:

Don’t offer open-ended choices. For example, ask “What do you want to eat?” and your toddler could request something you don’t have in the house or something that is inappropriate, such as a candy bar for breakfast. If you give a child free choice and then object to her choice, she will conclude that she didn’t have a real choice in the first place (diminishing her trust in you) and/or that her choices are not good ones (diminishing her trust in herself and her decision-making ability). So set the parameters when offering choices: “Would you like cereal and bananas or toast and peanut butter for breakfast?”

Don’t offer choices that can jeopardize health and safety. It needs to be clear to your toddler that there is no choice when it comes to buckling into a car seat, wearing mittens in below freezing weather, or running ahead into the street. But even in such non-negotiable cases, there are usually at least a couple of options you can offer to help bypass a battle: “Do you want me or Grandpa to buckle your belt?” “Do you want to hold Mommy’s hand or Daddy’s hand when we cross the street?”

Don’t burden a toddler with a decision when the consequences are great, as when you’re picking a preschool, for example. You can ask for her input, of course; once you’ve picked out two options that seem equally good, let her help make the final determination. But it’s irresponsible to put all of the responsibility for a major decision on a child’s shoulders. If the decision turns out to be a poor one, she’ll be reminded of it every day, and her sense of failure as a decision-maker may make her hesitant to make future decisions.

Be careful not to overwhelm your toddler with more decisions than she can comfortably handle. Making choices all day long—about food, about clothes, about toys, about playmates, about activities—can be stressful. So don’t preface every activity of every day with a “Would you prefer . . .”

Sometimes, you can make joint decisions, based on a blend of your toddler’s wishes and whims, and your experience and knowledge. As you share decision making, share with your toddler, in an informal way, the steps that are normally taken in making good decisions. Talk about the choices, what you need to know to make a good decision (“It may rain, so the library may be a better choice than the playground”), whether anyone will be hurt or be sad (“Grandma will be sad if we go to the movie instead of visiting her”), whether a choice is right or wrong (“We promised Jenny we’d go to the museum with her. It would be wrong to break our promise”). It’s too early to discuss the more mature concept of weighing risks against benefits when making a decision (If I walk in front of the swings I get to the sandbox sooner, but I risk getting hit with the swing—is it worth the risk?), but it’s not too early for your child to learn to take responsibility for a decision she’s made (“We decided to go to the playground. It started to rain and we got all wet, so we have to go home now instead of to the library”).

Let your toddler know that even when we try hard to make good decisions, we sometimes make mistakes. If she knows that it’s okay to make mistakes sometimes, she will feel freer to risk making decisions. When she makes a less-than-perfect choice, spare her the “I told you so’s” and let it speak for itself. Help her, without being critical or judgmental, to see the consequences of each decision, to learn from it, and to think about how the decision could be improved next time around. For example, she insists on wearing a dress to the playground and then falls and scrapes her knee. Instead of “I told you to wear pants . . .” try “I’m sorry you scraped your knee. What do you think you can do next time you come to the playground to keep your knees from getting hurt?”

Don’t expect practice to make perfect, however. With experience and maturity, your toddler’s decision-making skills will improve, but they (like your own) will never be foolproof. Like her parents before her, she’s only human.

“I’d like my son to be responsible and help out around the house, but I wonder if he’s old enough for me to start giving him chores.”

Achild who puts his dirty clothes in the hamper instead of leaving them where they drop, who cleans up his room without being told, who clears the dinner table without a murmur, who willingly gives up his Saturday afternoons to mow the lawn. A parent’s dream? Yes, indeed. Will this dream come true? Probably not. But it is possible to raise a responsible child—one who will do his fare share of the chores, with only the occasional grumble—if you:

Start early.
It’s certainly too early to require your toddler to perform regular chores, but it isn’t too early to give him an occasional taste of responsibility. In fact, since most toddlers enjoy imitating their parents around the house, now might be the perfect time to groom your child for a future of helping out. Assign him safe and simple tasks, such as picking up toys, carrying nonbreakables to and from the table, “dusting” the living room (see box page 416 for more ideas). Also teach him routinely to throw his trash (a drawing he rejected, the wrapping that held his sandwich, the used tissue) right into the wastepaper basket, trash can, or recycling bin.