Teaching your Toddlers :: The "Not So Terrible Two's"
By:
Rebecca Olsen
The early days of our children's life are filled with new experiences, joy,
excitement and many difficult challenges for both the child and the parent.
How do you deal with these challenges? Ignoring them, slapping/hitting,
yelling, or giving in? These are all possible responses to a child "not
doing what they are told." None of these really work and all that they teach
a toddler is that the world is a scary place. There are ways of dealing with
your toddler and the "terrible two's" that can make this time of life much
more relaxed and fun for you and your toddler. I will give you some
suggestions on how to avoid and/or react to stressful situations.
The first thing that we need to do is to define what the word discipline
means and doesn't mean. When applying the word discipline to a
parent/adult-child relationship it doesn't mean punishment. Yelling,
berating, hitting, or humiliating a child has nothing to do with discipline.
Discipline is teaching. At this age, you are teaching them primarily what is
right and wrong. The idea is to set limits for them. Making sure that these
limits are realistic and can be achieved by a toddler. Often parents have
unrealistic expectations of what their toddler can do. Here it is important
to realize that toddlers think differently than your average adult. They are
much more concrete in thought and quit impulsive by nature. To expect that
your toddler will show impulse control, sit for long periods of time, or
remember all of the rules of the house is setting yourselves up for
confrontation. Toddlers need constant and gentle reminders about the rules.
Here's a few guidelines that might help with disciplining your toddler:
1. Don't have too many rules. Keep the rule's you do have simple,
reasonable, and be consistent! Having too many, too complicated, or
inconsistent rules can be overwhelming and confusing for a toddler.
2. Child-proof your home. Go through every room in your house and remove
anything that is either valuable, dangerous, or messy. Preventive
child-proofing will stop many possible discipline problems. Don't expect
your toddler not to get into things just because you say no.
3. Divert and substitute. If a child is playing with something you don't
want him/her to have, replace it with another object or toy that he/she
enjoys. This approach avoids confrontation and does not place your child in
a situation where they'll say "no."
4. Teach and lead. You yourself must abide by the rules that you set. Your
child is watching you and learning from what they see. There are times when
we all must take a look in the mirror and see if the behavior that were
seeing from our toddler is theirs or ours. Changing the way your child
behaves might have to start from within.
There is enough stress in the world, and unfortunately, your child will
experience their share through their lifetime. Let's make these early years
fun, relaxing and enjoyable.
About the author ::
Rebecca Olsen is a stay at home mom that recently became a work at
home mom with MomsExpo. She is married to Angelo, and the mom of Jason.
She currently administrates and runs the
MomsExpo Message Boards, and is the
website administrator to
DirectSales.ws and
WAHMNetwork.com. She has
just recently become a freelance writer for
MomsExpo as well!
