Toddlers
Be Joyful!
When walking begins, the cuddly infant turns into a fully moving person. Full of curiosity and wonder the toddler moves constantly. With additional mobility comes more language development and physical growth. These changes bring disequilibrium and adults find themselves laughing with the toddler one minute and exasperated with the toddler the next.
Find joy in these changes and provide encouragement for discovery and learning. When milk spills turn the situation into a learning experience. Give your toddler a cloth or sponge and work together to clean it up. When falls occur take the opportunity to cuddle, comfort, reassure, and set him/her upright again. The toddler is learning!
Play with your toddler and appreciate your toddler's attempts to make sense of daily trials and errors, using walking and language to put it all together. Toddlers can sustain long periods of interest in whatever captures their interest. Become a co-learner with your toddler and ask questions, explore objects, seek answers, and engage in the process. You will reap benefits from rich interactions between the two of you.
Toddlers will scribble on paper and walls, chalkboards, and sidewalks, and any other surface available. Provide the opportunity for scribbles to happen. They are beginnings of writing. All of us started out as scribblers!
Toddlers love to play with water. What could be easier than giving your toddler a bucket of water, a paintbrush, and suggesting he/she paints the outside wall of your house? For the toddler the act of moving the brush up and down brings delight--not the outcome. Where possible let your toddler use water based paint with a small paint brush and paper. Be prepared for clean up because it is so tempting to put paint on legs, hands, arms, and belly. In the home a high chair or bathtub is a good location for this activity!
The word mine becomes the repeated word for many toddlers. It connects to growing awareness of their personhood and how to effectively interject themselves into their surroundings. Me is another favorite word. As your toddler learns meanings of words, take joy in the ongoing effort he/she makes to understand ever-changing development. Read books to your toddler to help explain new ideas.
Follow your toddler's interests--they are showing you their world!
