Toddlers develop rapidly, constantly amazing parents with new abilities and quirks. Their brains soak up new information as they gain independence. Big emotions come in small packages as toddlers learn emotional intelligence. Expect play based on creativity, not logic, along with strong preferences that change quickly. Parents must patiently balance fostering self-help skills and preventing frustration. While toddler challenges can overwhelm, each phase passes quickly, revealing the wonder of these little people blossoming.
Their Brains Are Wired to Learn:
By age three, the brain of a child has grown to 80% of its adult size. Toddlers’ brains are growing at a rapid rate, which makes them sponges that can absorb new knowledge. Toddlers have a remarkable ability to learn, from picking up songs and rhymes by memory to picking up social skills like waving hello and goodbye. Approximately 700 new connections between neurons are made in their brains each second! This peak period of learning, especially in areas like language, music, and movement, won’t last forever. So foster your toddler’s curiosity and feed their hungry minds.
Big Emotions Come in Small Packages:
Toddlers are still learning to identify, process, and regulate big emotions in their small bodies. Without the mature coping strategies, communication skills, or frontal lobe development of older kids and adults, toddlers get overwhelmed easily. Expect mercurial mood swings from tears to laughter in mere minutes as they navigate intense feelings they don’t fully understand.
Toddler tantrums aren’t attempts to misbehave or manipulate, but genuine expressions of frustration from lacking emotional intelligence. With patience and compassion, guide your toddler through the ups and downs by naming their feelings, empathizing, setting gentle limits, and offering comfort. Their emotional turmoil will give way to more stability as their developing brains make sense of this emotional rollercoaster ride called toddlerhood! Your little one doesn’t have a meltdown to push your buttons – they genuinely feel things strongly. Stay patient, name their feelings, and offer comfort to help build their emotional intelligence.
Independence Ups and Downs:
Around ages 2-3, toddlers start to flex their independence muscles. They’ll want to try dressing themselves, feeding themselves, toilet training, and asserting their preferences. Saying “no” becomes a favorite word. While this growing autonomy should be encouraged, toddlers still need lots of support. Find the balance between fostering self-help skills while preventing frustration. Pick your battles, involve your toddler, and employ flexibility – potty training may get messy, and wardrobe choices may be creative, but this independence is essential for development.
They Seek Sensory Input:
Toddlers explore the world around them using all their senses: touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. Expect them to put everything in their mouths, fidget constantly, seek out textures that soothe or stimulate them, and generally keep moving. This sensory input is key to their neurological development. Create toddler-friendly spaces with various surfaces, sounds, and open areas suited to their desire to move. Bring sensory elements like sand, water beads, play dough, music, and finger paints into playtime.
Preferences Change Rapidly:
If your toddler has a favorite food, toy, or activity, enjoy it while it lasts! Toddler preferences seem to change day to day if not hour to hour. Don’t take it personally if they suddenly hate food they loved yesterday or reject activities they previously enjoyed. This fickleness is normal. Keep exposing them to lots of different textures, tastes, and experiences. With time and repeated exposure, some preferences will stick. But expect to stay on your toes when it comes to pleasing your toddler!
Creativity Abounds:
A box is never just a box to a toddler – it’s a rocket ship, race car, superhero cape, or drum set! Give your toddler simple, open-ended toys and unstructured time for free play and watch their imaginations take flight. Whether they are talking to stuffed animals, building towers then, knocking them down, or making up silly songs, toddlers see the world without limits. Fuel their creativity by following their lead in play instead of directing. Say yes more often in play, set them up for success, then step back and observe where their minds take them.
Sleep is Elusive:
Just when sleep training finally seems to stick, toddlers switch it up. From dropping naps to waking frequently at night, toddler sleep is infamously erratic. Physical and cognitive leaps, changes in diet, disruption to routines, illness, and nightmares can all impact sleep. Do your best to set consistent naps and bedtimes, wind down before bed with calm activities, limit screen time, and employ positive sleep associations. But don’t be surprised if you feel in an endless loop of sleep regressions where you fix one issue only to face another. This, too, shall pass! Stay consistent, and know it’s not forever.
Everything Goes in Their Mouth:
Between ages 1-3 years, mouthing and biting behaviors peak as part of toddlers’ oral exploration. As they learn to grasp objects and navigate spaces, toddlers literally taste-test everything around them. While sometimes unpleasant for parents and risky in terms of germs, mouthing is developmentally appropriate at this stage. Gently redirect them to chew on teethers and toys instead of your fingers! Maintain supervision and toddler-proof your home by moving choking hazards and non-food items out of reach. Understanding this sensory need will help curb frustration when you feel like all you say is, “Take that out of your mouth!”
Stranger Danger is Real:
Between 8-14 months, infants develop separation anxiety and attach strongly to primary caregivers. By age 2, most toddlers outgrow separation anxiety but enter a phase of stranger wariness. They keenly differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar people. When someone they don’t recognize enters their space, they hide behind your leg or burst into tears. Help timid toddlers warm up by having strangers interact at their level and letting them set the pace. Avoid forcing interactions or downplaying their concerns. In time, they’ll learn that while unfamiliarity isn’t necessarily bad, your presence helps ensure their safety.
Tantrums Peak:
While no parent looks forward to toddler meltdowns, they are a normal part of development. Tantrums tend to peak around 18-24 months as toddlers work through frustration over their limited communication abilities and lack of emotional regulation. Setting firm limits, naming emotions, avoiding situations that lead to overwhelmed states, carrying snacks to prevent hunger-induced tantrums, and distraction/redirection can help minimize outbursts. Take deep breaths yourself, don’t take misbehavior personally, avoid shame or punishments, and know that riding out developmental tantrum stages truly does end.
Empathy Emerges:
Between ages 2-3, toddlers’ social development reaches exciting milestones. Simple play transforms into interactive cooperation. Conversations shift from toddlers talking at you to engaging you in back-and-forths. Pretend play becomes more elaborate. And with this social transformation emerges prosocial behavior like empathy, sympathy, generosity, and compassion. You’ll catch them mimicking the empathy they see modeled by comforting a crying friend or taking care of a stuffed animal. Praise behavioral instances where they show care towards others to reinforce this critical emotional intelligence. Help them better understand emotions in themselves and others by continuing to name feelings out loud. The toddler years mark powerful progress on the path to socially competent kids.
There you have it – a roundup of remarkable, bewildering, charming, and unexpected insights into the incredible developmental phase of toddlerhood. While caring for these pint-sized people certainly keeps you on your toes, remember to pause and soak up the magical wonder that is your growing toddler! Stay flexible, keep your curiosity fresh alongside theirs, laugh at the happy surprises, and give grace during the challenges. Each phase passes quicker than the last, so enjoy walking alongside your toddler on this journey more wondrous by the day!
For more such interesting blogs, Visit EuroKids
