Your heart is warmed and embraced many times by your child’s actions. But, it is likely that there are other times when your baby drives you insane, making all you know about parenting useless as well as your attempts to correct his behavior through “no” and “don’t”.
If this is your case, then don’t worry! You just need to take a closer look into toddler’s psychology. It will equip you with practical parenting tips for toddlers, so you can embark on a beautiful parenting journey, nurturing love in your baby and maintaining his healthy development.
At what age should you start raising a child?
To date, the need to educate a child from the first months of his life has been confirmed by numerous scientific data.
Factors such as a gradual increase in the periods of wakefulness, reflecting the performance of the child’s brain, the early development of his analyzers (hearing, vision, etc.), as well as the development of speech, are of significant importance in upbringing.
And if you do not raise a baby from the first months of his life, you can miss a lot. Not a single day should be wasted for the implementation of the upbringing process.
Psychologists believe that half of a person’s mental development occurs at the age of the first 3-4 years of life.
If there is no upbringing process happening during this period, then either a delay in brain development or the formation of undesirable habits in the child’s behavior are inevitable.
It is impossible to give any ready-made recipes for raising a child, since much here depends on the individual (typological) characteristics of the child, the environment, the habits that have developed in him earlier, and the state of his health.
However, there are a number of general pedagogical rules that parents need to follow. Let’s take a look at some of them.
1. How to Keep Your Baby Safe
Do not forget that from the age of one, the child begins to be very active, and your main task is to make your home as safe for him as possible. Try to look at the surrounding area through the eyes of your little one, carefully study his favorite places and remove any dangerous objects. Here are the infant safety checklist in home and car to learn more about risks of injury and keep your baby safe:
- Keep pillows or thick quilts away from a baby’s sleep environment to avoid the risk of suffocation.
- Always put your baby to sleep on his or her back because tummy sleeping increases the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and suffocation.
- Do not place the baby’s crib near window blinds and curtain cords to avoid the risk of strangulation.
- Never allow a gap larger than two fingers between the mattress and sides of the crib to prevent entrapment.
- Avoid falling asleep with a baby near you or in your arms – for his safety, the baby must be put to bed in his crib only.
- Never, ever leave your child alone in a bathtub or near water even for a moment. Remember: bath seats or rings or any other bathing aids are not safety devices.
- Do not leave a baby alone in a high chair and always use all safety straps. The baby’s movements can cause the seat to fall, resulting in head or other injuries.
- In order to avoid injury, it is advisable to cover all sharp corners with some thick and soft material.
- Secure furniture to avoid tip-overs.
- Put plugs on the sockets, remove the tablecloths so that the child does not overturn on himself what is on the tables.
- Make sure that there are no small objects around the child that he can swallow or stick into his nose.
- Keep the balcony door closed and block your stairways with safety gates.
- Try not to turn on all appliances in the kitchen unnecessarily. It is best to keep as few items as possible on the kitchen counter. When using various electrical appliances, if possible, turn on the child lock function, which is found in most modern technology.
- In the bathroom, remove household chemicals as far as possible. Be sure to place a rug on the floor so that the child does not slip.
2. Help Your Baby Develop Healthy Skills
At a year and a half, the child can already be potted. About two years old, children are taught to observe the rules of personal hygiene, brush their teeth on their own, wash their hands before eating and after walking, and use a napkin.
Under the age of three, a child needs about 10-11 hours of sleep at night and 1-1.5 hours during the day.
By the age of three, the child can run and jump confidently, and at this time, it might be a good idea to teach him how to ride a tricycle. It will help him develop his motor skills.
At three years old, the baby should confidently use a pencil and felt-tip pens and paint pictures. At the age of 3, you can already start teaching your child to read.
In addition, at this age, children are already able to memorize poems in several lines, and it is essential to train this skill with them and develop their memory.
It is also important to gradually teach the child to concentrate on a task for at least 3-5 minutes and try to find a solution himself.
In addition to the skills of personal hygiene, which were mentioned above, by the age of three, the child should be taught to use not only a spoon, but also a fork, and teach him to eat and drink carefully.
If a child wants to help his mother in the kitchen, it is essential to support his initiative. Let him get food out of the cabinet or refrigerator, help you roll out the dough, sculpt pies. So you will gradually establish useful skills in your child, and at the same time he will feel like a participant in adult life.
3. More Time Together, More Communication, More Value to Feelings
From the moment a child turns one year old and up to three years old, it becomes easier for parents on the one hand, and on the other, much more difficult, because this is the most crucial period in his life. It is at this time that a personality begins to form in a person and its foundations are laid.
Therefore, despite the fact that at this age children become more independent and are able to occupy themselves, it is extremely important to spend a lot of time with them and communicate correctly.
In addition to laying the foundations of the personality at this age, self-esteem begins to form in children, and here it is very important not to harm the child. Try to always acknowledge the importance of your child’s emotions, both positive and negative.
In no case do not devalue childhood experiences, because otherwise the baby will form attitudes about the infidelity and unimportance of his feelings and emotions, which he will carry into adulthood.
In order to understand the child, learn to look at the world through his eyes. For example, if he lost his beloved teddy bear, then you need to realize that for him this is the loss of his best friend, so you should not tell the child that there is nothing wrong with losing him and that he is crying because of nonsense. And even more so, you can’t scold a child in such a situation.
If the child is crying, give him the opportunity to cry, hug him. Then the child will understand that he can trust you and count on your support, and he will have a feeling that his home is a safe place, where he will always be understood and comforted, where his feelings are always important. Listen to your child very carefully, ask clarifying questions.
At the age of three, children experience their first crisis. For the first time they begin to realize their independence and show their desires. The words “I want” – “I do not want”, “I will not” begin to sound more often. Stubbornness and whims begin. Aggression may appear.
During this period, it is important to support the child in his desire for independence, to respect his personal space. Do not try to help him all the time and control him in everything. Your task is to ensure the safety of the child and to praise him for his success (whatever that may be).
Scold the baby only for wrong actions, while not identifying the action with the personality of the child. Do not put negative labels on him and compare the child with other children. It would be much better to say “you are wrong” or “you did the wrong thing” and explain why.
By respecting your child’s personality, you will maintain their trust and not hurt their self-esteem.
Try to take your child’s opinion into account. Whenever possible, be sure to give him the right to choose.
It is also important to remember that at this age the child is already well aware of his gender. If you have a girl, give her the opportunity to choose clothes herself and make her beautiful hairstyles.
The most important psychological task of parents is to enable their child to feel “big”.
4. Encourage Independence in Your Child
If your toddler is drawn to an object that has attracted his attention, he is interested (for example, a toy) and finally gets the object himself, without the help of adults – he is happy, he is satisfied with his own actions.
Such actions of the child need to be encouraged with verbal praise, which will further strengthen his craving for independence.
Sometimes, in a similar situation, it happens that a child signals with phrases “I can’t” or “give it to me” and asks for the help of adults. And yet do not rush to make it easy for him, but try to motivate him to independent actions – “You’re already a big boy, try it yourself.”
Try to achieve your child doing by himself what he usually finds hard to do without your help. At this early stage, it is possible to build confidence in his abilities by helping him to deal with situations on his own.
In this way, you develop in your child a need for self-action and the ability to overcome difficulties.
5. Raise Your Toddler in Parental Unity
The child will more easily adapt to the environment if the parents use their usual ways of dealing with him.
The concept of “unity of upbringing” means the unity of the approach to the child on the part of all adults who take part in his upbringing, including grandparents as well. Parents and grandparents, participating in the upbringing of the child, should have complete consistency in the approach to him and in the presentation of certain requirements to his behavior.
Only such a unity of adult family members in their views on the upbringing of a child can provide him with stable positive skills and balanced behavior.
If mom forbids “touching the clock”, and dad allows “take it, play it, son!”, then in this case the baby will never form a clear perception of such an important concept as “can” or “can’t”.
With such a system of incorrect upbringing, the child will quickly understand: you can behave differently in the same situation – the only important part is who is present at the time, father or mother.
Neglecting the unity of upbringing forms such traits in a child’s character as stubbornness, negativism and irritability.
So, a single tactic in your parenting, complete consistency in the actions of all family members is an important parenting requirement. Remember that your child at this age is more empathetic, quick-witted and intelligent than some parents sometimes think.
6. Match Your Request with Child’s Desire
To get your child to listen to you, it is very important that your request is justified and matches the child’s desire or acute need. For example, you say: “we need to sleep” – laying the baby down at the time when he feels tired and sleepy or “let’s go for a walk” – when he really wants to get outside and play.
In addition to this condition, in order to develop the child’s necessary reaction to the word “need”, the requirements of adults must be easy and doable for him.
Requirements of parents such as to sit quietly or to wait for a long time for something are unbearable for toddlers (1-3 years old).
A child at this age cannot be in a motionless state yet. The ability to “wait”, “sit”, etc., must be exercised gradually. It will form at an older age, after three years.
Further, each time you need to make sure that the child fulfills your assignment. And if the child responds to any of your suggestions to do something with its obligatory fulfillment, he will form a habit of behaving correctly in accordance with one or another request of adults. But this is nothing but obedience.
7. Teach Your Child by Example
Usually, at the age of 2-3 years, children tend to imitate the actions of adults. They depict the actions of mother, father, grandmother, doctor, etc. You can see this when they “feed” and “treat” dolls, “prepare” lunch and “read” books.
The ability of the child to imitate is very useful for proper upbringing, as the learning of the necessary skills and habits is based mainly on this ability. By imitating the actions of an adult child, he learns a lot — neatly eating, folding his clothes, cleaning his shoes, collecting toys. And in the future, kids learn hygienic skills and manners of cultural behavior by observing similar actions of adults.
You should always remember that your behavior is carefully monitored by your baby and behave accordingly. It is also necessary to draw the child’s attention to all the positive actions that are taking place in front of his eyes. It is strongly advisable to accompany those actions with verbal explanations and persistently try to develop a child’s positive response to them.
8. Be Gentle With Your Baby’s Attention
The most common mistakes in upbringing include frequent and unmotivated prohibitions, “disruption of attention” and lack of stability in the daily routine.
So, why are frequent bans harmful? All sorts of “no” causes a state of inhibition in the child. The age-related properties of its nervous system are such that they cannot provide long-term immobility. This leads to overstrain and depletion of the baby’s nervous system: he gets excited, screams, cries, stomps his feet, falls to the floor, etc.
When forbidding a child to do something, you say “don’t do it,” “don’t touch,” “don’t pull,” etc., that is, different words with a negative particle “don’t”. However, due to the peculiarities of the child’s perception of adult speech – after all, the baby has just learned to understand it – he does not always catch this short particle “not” and often hears “do”, “touch”, “pull”, etc.
You will be wrong if you allow the child to do everything, or, on the contrary, prohibit it. The child must definitely know the clear line between “can” and “no”. But there should be few prohibitions at this age. It is advisable to organize the environment for your baby at home in such a way that more is permitted than what is prohibited.
And what is a “disruption of attention” in this case? Imagine the following situation: a little girl is intently playing with a doll, wrapping it in a blanket, аnd mom has no time, she is in a hurry and demands from her daughter that she immediately begin to dress. It is this sharp disturbance of the child’s concentrated activity that is the “disruption of attention”.
The child is completely captured by the game. Suddenly, an immediate demand from the mother halts the game.
In this case, the protest, resistance of the toddler and her crying are understandable – after all, all this is due to the child’s inability to switch to another action, which is normal at this age.
If such incorrect techniques with a “disruption of attention” are used often, then a child may develop a negative attitude towards the proposals and demands of adults.
It is necessary to gently and skillfully switch the toddler’s activity from one activity to another, without violating his fragile attention – first with words, if the child understands speech well, then showing what he will have to do. This way of switching attracts the baby’s attention and piques his interest in a new activity.
Never abruptly and often change the day regime of your baby.
Usually, his living conditions in home environment are relatively constant. The main components of the daily routine: sleep, playtime and feeding alternate almost always in the same sequence. At the same time, certain stable habits are fixed in the child, which are of great importance for his life.
If the sequence of events of the day is suddenly disrupted (arrival of guests, change of feeding or sleep time, departure to another country, etc.), then, as a rule, the child’s behavior changes: stubbornness, crying, whims, decreased appetite and sleep disorders may appear.
To avoid these phenomena, it is necessary not to allow frequent and significant changes in the conditions of the child’s life. If you need to change the environment (moving, entering a kindergarten, etc.), try not to change the child’s habits dramatically.
You can’t bring a lot of new things into the life of your baby at once. Of course, it can and should be diversified, but gradually, within the limits allowed by the age-related endurance of the child’s nervous system.
9. How to Teach a Child to Understand the Word “No”
First, let’s talk about the age characteristics of children. Babies under age one cannot adequately perceive the instructions of adults, but they distinguish between facial expressions, gestures and intonations, and partly understand that their mother did not like it.
Already at this age, it is necessary to set the boundaries of what is permissible: for example, pinching and pulling the hair. Some parents endure stoic pain, because they believe that the child cannot yet realize what he is doing, and it is pointless to forbid him.
Here are some practical tips on how to teach your child to understand the word “no”:
- The proper way to convey the boundaries to your baby is by showing that something he does is unpleasant through your facial expressions, gestures and intionations.
- Don’t use bans too often. If the child hears them every 5 minutes with or without reason, he will stop perceiving.
- Say “no” seriously and calmly. The effectiveness of what has been said will depend on intonation. If you are touched by the independence of your baby, he will not take the ban seriously.
- Explain why you are saying “no”. Use clear words and phrases.
“Don’t touch this toy, we won’t pay it off later” – a complicated explanation.
“Don’t touch that toy, it is that baby’s toy. You can break it and that baby will cry.” This is easier for a child to understand.
- Be consistent. Sometimes we unknowingly confuse the child. For example, today we say: “you can eat only in the kitchen”, and tomorrow we allow the toddler to eat cookies in the living room, so he won’t bother us while we are on the phone”. Try to avoid these situations. If you have strict rules, it is best to talk them over with other caregivers who spend time with your baby.
- Offer an alternative. It will be great if, by forbidding something to the child, you smooth out his chagrin with an equally interesting activity. Can’t draw on wallpaper? But you can do it on paper. Can’t beat other children? You can knock on wood with a stick.
- It is much more pleasant and effective to teach your baby not through punishment, but through praise.
- Instead of scolding for disobedience, celebrate the right things. The child will be pleased that he is being praised, and he will be more willing to fulfill requests.
Hopefully, reading this article will help you better understand your baby and raise him happy and healthy. Don’t hesitate to spend more of your time to research on how you can be a better parent, it will pay off, for sure.