Great Ideas for Parenting Toddlers

In my last blog, I introduced the helpful book, Small Beginnings by Barbara Curtis.   Barbara’s practical ideas for parenting toddlers lift us from merely survival of this phase of life to enjoyment and success in our daily experience.  Here’s today’s promised bite-sized piece:

Strategy 1:  Observe Your Child
As a student teacher, Barbara learned the power of observation in helping us understand children’s behavior.  As we slow down and carefully watch our children play, eat, and interact with us and others, we’ll discover their preferences, frustrations, relational patterns, developmental abilities and challenges.  This wisdom will help us discern how and when to help our child learn a new task, resolve a frustration, shore up a weak area, celebrate an accomplishment.  Observation is beneficial! “I believe that careful consideration actually nurtures feelings of tenderness in the observer for the observed,” Barbara concludes.  When your toddler is driving you crazy, try taking an observation break. 

Today: Discipline yourself to slow down and quietly observe your child for several small blocks of time; indoor time, outdoor play, meal time.  Start an observation journal and jot down what you see and learn from each block of time. 

Strategy 2:  Understand Your Child’s Limitations
As adults, we tend to forget the normal childhood experience of daily encountering things we don’t understand or can’t easily do. Think about awkward it feels to do something unfamiliar, for example driving to a new location.  We usually go more slowly. We may even get lost and have to turn around.  Without patience, it can be frustrating, especially if the directions are confusing or there is construction.  Our toddlers are encountering this type of unfamiliarity multiple times every day! 

Today: Try using your non-dominant hand only for a few hours or wearing a pair of mittens or extra large gloves to help you understand how toddlers lack fine motor control. You’ll be less likely to lose it with a toddler for spilling something or making a mess.  Patience grows with understanding. 

Strategy 3:  Children Model After Us
Children do what they see. They are “little mirrors.”  Yikes!  When we observe certain patterns in our children, we can often trace their behavior to something that we do, good and bad.  As toddlers, my children often surprised people by saying, “Bless You!” when they sneezed. Guess what?  I bless sneezers without fail!  My ten-year-old son dashed around the kitchen, slamming drawers and cupboards in his haste. Guess what? My style could also be described as “dash and crash.” In order for our children’s imitation of us to be profitable, we may need to tune in to what we’re unconsciously modeling.    Our young children try to imitate what we do, at our speed and capacity, which they are not capable of.  Slow down and deliberately model proper ways to brush teeth, set the table, clean up toys, fold clothes.

Today: Try and be attentive to how you are modeling life skills to your kids.  This will often mean slowing down to teach skills at their ability level.

Strategy 4:  Help with our Heart Attitudes
Not only do kids model our behavior, they pick up our attitudes.  We’re thrilled when they imitate our strengths, but horrified when we see our weaknesses show up!  So we need to constantly work on growing in character; humbly aware of our limitations and seeking to mature emotionally and spiritually.  Is there unhealthy fear in our lives?  Do we have bad habits, unwholesome attitudes, a critical and unforgiving spirit?  Yep, we all have some areas we need to work on. The goal is to develop healthy attitudes to pass onto our children.  Remember to be patient and kind to yourself because you are in process too. And you have to give yourself grace in order to pass it on to your kids.

Today: Tune in to your heart attitude.  Get quiet and consider what negatives you might be passing on to your kids. Talk about them with a trusted friend and make a plan to help each other change one negative this week.

Strategy 5:  Be Encouraged
Parenting toddlers can be discouraging.  Exhaustion and lack of recognition can take their toll on our confidence.  We need to resist being too hard on ourselves. “Confidence does not mean that we do the job perfectly, but that we have faith that we can and are willing to do it to the best of our ability.” Healthy confidence says, “I am loved and I am the best parent for my child, faults and all.” This attitude models to our children the love and patience with themselves that they will need throughout life. Perfectionism models to our children a harsh and impatient attitude toward being human. 

 Today: Ponder the level of your confidence in parenting. Are you hobbled by unhealthy perfectionism?  Do you need a confidence boost provided by knowing you are loved and that there’s grace for your mistakes as you’re learning to parent? 

In my next blog we’ll look at the next section from Small Beginnings:  Five Potentials for Lifelong Learning:  Independence, Order, Self-Control, Concentration and Service.

-posted by Donna Detweiler who loves passing on this information because of how much she needed a boost in confidence while parenting her toddlers.