Child development – Page 4

September 14, 2011March 8, 2012

Playing with power

Well, it has happened. My sweet baby is already becoming a willful toddler. The past week or so has been filled with frustrating moments for her and for anyone near her. She has begun to whine. She is clinging to us like she thinks we’ll disappear if we’re out of her sight. And of course, she’s also starting to walk.

Learning to walk and talk are HUGE developmental milestones for a baby and with the new development comes an equally big emotional response. Tears and frustration abound as we humans learn new skills and reach new levels of development. And it’s not just babies who experience the emotional ride of learning new skills. Children and adults of all ages have the same big feelings. When we reach a goal, there’s often a big emotional high and an accompanying let down.

So, what do we do with those feelings of sadness and anger that go along with new accomplishments? We can try to ignore them or shove them aside, but that sure hasn’t been working at our house. I’d rather embrace the feelings and provide a safe space for my daughter to fully express all that she’s going through.

Amazingly, just last week, my little one learned how to roar like a lion and wow, it’s a really ferocious roar! So my mom and I began to play a game with her where we pretend to be frightened by her roar. She LOVES it! It’s really one of the first times I’ve seen her expressing and enjoying her power, she completely lights up. She roars again and again while we cower in mock fear. “Oh no! Don’t eat me! I’m so scared,” can be heard often at our house these days. Here’s a short video of the game:

Then last night it was bedtime. And you guessed it, she didn’t want to go to bed. I could tell she was getting agitated and she started to test my husband by hitting him. She knows that hitting people isn’t allowed, but she wasn’t sure how else to express the anger and frustration bubbling up inside her.

So I redirected her hitting to the stuffed animals on her bed. Before we knew it, my husband, daughter, and I were all throwing and hitting and jumping on the stuffed animals yelling, “Take that!” and “Aaarrgghh!” We all had a blast and each of us got an opportunity to express any unexpressed anger or frustration. I can’t even tell you how satisfying it was to slam that pink elephant into the wall. It was truly liberating. The best part was that after the anger release, she was tired and ready to wind down to sleep.

So the next time anyone at your house is whining or getting agitated, try playing a power game. Sometimes, just having an appropriate outlet for anger, frustration, or powerlessness is all a child really needs. And when offered a healthy way to release those feelings, kids can easily return to their usual kind and cooperative selves.

Wish me luck with the rest of toddler-hood, I have a feeling I’m going to need it!

Have a great week, Shelly

June 1, 2011March 19, 2012

Delay of gratification is a crucial skill

Photo by Suzette Hibble

Teaching your child to delay gratification can help him in all sorts of ways. He will learn self-control and willpower. He will also reduce his impulsivity and increase in academic performance. But delaying gratification does not come easily and often won’t develop naturally, unless parents and caregivers help children learn this important skill.

Luckily, you can start to teach these skills at any age with simple games that don’t take much time. Start by offering your child a toy you know she wants but at the last second pull it back saying, “Ut oh, wait just a moment. Wait…wait…great job waiting!” and then hand your child the toy. At first just ask your infant or toddler to wait a few seconds. Then as your child becomes better and better at waiting for the object of her desire, begin to lengthen the time required.

This works best if you’re both in a good mood and you’re playful in your removal of the object. Children always learn best when they’re enjoying life. But if your child reacts negatively to your attempts to play a waiting game, just ignore any outburst, give the toy back after the allotted time and try again later.

It won’t do much good to tell your child when they didn’t wait well, but when they do, be sure to give him some positive feedback using effort and/or behavior based praise. “Great waiting!” “Good job!” And “Wow, I could see how much you wanted that, but you waited anyway! Nice!” are all great ways to reinforce delay of gratification.

Do your best to stay away from character based praise though. “Good boy!” or “You’re so smart!” can actually make some kids more self-conscious and fearful, rather than helping them feel good about their accomplishments. For more information on effort based praise see my earlier article “The dangers of praise.”

Impulsivity is a defining characteristic of young children, so don’t expect too much too fast. But if you play waiting games a few times a day, every day, you can expect your child’s capacity for waiting to grow over time. And that’s good news, because in the short term, you’ll have a more patient and considerate child.

And in the long term, delay of gratification has been linked to better studying behaviors and might even be linked to reduced drug use in teens and young adults. If you caught my blog about a conscious relationship to money, you know that delay of gratification is also a great asset in terms of financial planning, saving, and living within your means.

Right now I’m wishing that I had learned much earlier to delay gratification, but we all have to start somewhere, and I’m a firm believer that it’s never too late to learn a new skill. So, as I teach my daughter to wait, I’ll also be practicing delaying my own gratification and we’ll both enjoy the benefits of increased willpower and reduced impulsivity.

What have your experiences with impulsivity and self-control been? I would love to know what you think about this topic. Please leave me a comment!

Have a wonderful week, Shelly

February 23, 2011April 28, 2011

Understanding willful toddlers

I’m generally a happy and optimistic person. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had dark moments, but for the most part I enjoy my life and am grateful for it. However, when I’m with a toddler who seems intent on pushing my buttons, I am hating life. It seems like no matter what I do to please the little tyrant, I’m still fending off testing behavior hour after hour.

Here are a few empowering thoughts, assumptions, questions, and some dialogue that have helped me change gears and reconnect with a young person after I’ve felt frustrated or hurt:

Q: My 20 mo. old son is throwing things in clear defiance of my wishes. It seems like he WANTS to upset me.

New interpretation: He’s just asking to play.

Challenge: How can we make it a safe/fun/mutual game?

Inside Shelly’s head:

Oh no, he’s going to throw that. “Stop!”, He throws it anyway and aims at something breakable but misses. “Wow, I’m so glad you aimed away from the flower pot! That flowerpot is fragile and breakable and it would be expensive to replace it. Hmmm, I wonder what would be good to throw something at…Oh! I know! Let’s throw beanbags into the special hole we made! I want the red beanbag, which one do you want? I’m going to throw it into the hole. Can you make it into the hole? C’mon! Let’s go get the beanbags!”

Q: My 18 mo. old daughter uses a blood curdling scream when she wants attention and sometimes for no reason that we know of. Continue reading “Understanding willful toddlers”

January 12, 2011

How to foster an emerging sense of order

Between 2 and 4 years old most young people begin to develop their sense of order. This is the time when your child will become exasperated if you say the wrong word during story time or if you move her artwork or put away his toy before he was finished playing with it. It can be a difficult time for parents and caregivers alike, because in the past your little one didn’t even notice when you put away his toys. Now everything starts to become a negotiation because along with a sense of order, a stronger will and resulting tantrums also mark this stage of development.

This sensitive period for order can be challenging, but there’s no fighting against human development, and if you think about it, you wouldn’t want to anyway. This is actually the perfect time to teach your child how to put away toys, straighten her room, and help out in the kitchen. But in order to capitalize on your child’s innate desire to learn and this sensitive period for order heed this advice: Attention to detail is the key to getting the most cooperation from your child during this time.

Let me illustrate further; Paying attention to minute details and showing your child all the tiny steps involved in tidying, cleaning, and putting things away create more interest and better results. For instance, if you would like to teach your three year old to fold and put away his socks follow these steps slowly, carefully, and methodically (and wait until you have your child’s attention before moving on to the next step):

1) Take newly dried clothes out of the dryer while they’re still warm

2) Put them in a pile on the bed and invite your child to feel the warmth and play in the pile a little bit.

3) Ask your child if he would like to play a sock folding game. If yes, continue, if no, try another time.

4) Ask your child to help you find two matching socks. Continue reading “How to foster an emerging sense of order”

December 29, 2010

Watch what you say because your baby really is listening

The past few weeks my husband and I have been trying our hardest to remove some of the more colorful language from our vocabularies so that our baby’s first words aren’t profanity. Not that we curse all that much, but knowing children as I do, I know that it only take a few exposures to a word for kids to learn them, especially during the time when they’re busy expanding their vocabularies at a phenomenal rate at around 18 months old. So we’ve been saying funny things like “fire-pants!” and “rats!” or even my husband’s famous “son of a bench!”

The truth is, recent research shows that children can learn a new word after just ONE exposure and they’ll remember that word for weeks and even months, even if they haven’t heard the word since! The study itself was pretty interesting. I read about it in my new favorite book “The Scientist in the Crib” by Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl. In the study they brought 18-month-old children into the lab, showed them an apple corer and said, “Look! A dax.” Children remembered the name of the “dax” for several months even with no further exposure to apple corers in the mean time.

The process kids are going through at around 18 months when they enter their naming explosion is called “fast mapping” and that’s when your little one starts pointing to everything in sight and asking you to name it. “Whatsat?” they’ll ask repeatedly, as you well know. They also start naming everything they can and they want you to repeat things over and over again. It can be a little annoying. But when we dig in to what kids are actually doing during this time, it becomes fascinating and amazing. Continue reading “Watch what you say because your baby really is listening”