Toddlers

Toddlers: Your Game Plan for the Terrific Twos

"The first three years of life establishes the blueprints for all of our future relationships." -John Bowlby

Taming Toddler Tantrums

Temper tantrums are normal for toddlers, even legendary. Toddlers feel so passionately about everything, and they simply don't have enough frontal cortex capacity yet to control their strong emotions when they're upset.

Easing the Transition to the Toddler Bed

So your toddler is giving up the crib? Or moving out of the family bed? You’ve been to the store and picked out the cutest toddler bed? All of you are totally excited?

Feeding Your Toddler

Want to help your toddler develop healthy eating habits? Then offer him only healthy food. There's no reason your toddler needs sweets or junk food at all. But even more important than what your toddler eats is his relationship with food. You want him to be in charge of how much he eats, and of getting it into his own mouth.

Discipline: Managing Your Toddler so you can enjoy him

How to manage a toddler? And stay positive?! Believe it or not, Yes you can!

Child-Led Potty Learning Without a Power Struggle

Moving from diapers to being self-sufficiently able to use the toilet is a natural process. Humans have been doing it for a long time. They all get out of diapers sooner or later.

So you don't actually need to "toilet train" your child. Instead, set up conditions so your child can learn. Your goal is to make it as easy and effortless as possible. Think of this as a process of learning that unfolds over time, like all other learning and mastery.

Your Toddler or Preschooler and TV

 

If you want a child who can spend long hours entertaining herself (which will afford you many breaks and make you the envy of all your friends with children); and if you want your child to have the best chance of reaching her educational potential, be able to listen and retain what she learns and need to spend less time doing homework, studying for tests, stressing about school in general; then don’t turn on the TV for the first 2 to 3 years. It is much easier than you imagine. But once you begin using TV, it’s harder.
-Janet Lansbury

Help Your Toddler Learn to Put Himself to Sleep

Toddlers don't seem to have an off switch. Often, when they're tired, they just reverberate faster, like an over-wound toy, until they crash.

Helping Your Toddler with Separation Anxiety

Dreading leaving your toddler with the babysitter or at daycare and want to prepare him?

Routines that Toddlers Can Understand

Young children function best with structured schedules. Toddlers and preschoolers, especially, feel small in the world. Most things happen TO them. They crave predictability, knowing what will happen, because it gives them some sense of control. A predictable routine allows children to feel safe, and to develop a sense of mastery in handling their lives.

Why Every Home Needs a Calm-Down Corner

Sometimes, despite your best efforts to express understanding, your child gets emotionally dysregulated. When you realize that your child is getting to that dangerously over-wrought place, suggest that the two of you take some “cozy time”—snuggle up and read a book. Often the connection and the shift to his “thinking brain” will help your child re-regulate.

14 Tips for Gentle Weaning

The verb "To Wean" comes from a Hebrew word meaning to ripen. So when the time is ripe (or maybe when the child is ripe?!) the baby becomes a child who no longer needs to nurse. That process is designed by Mother Nature to be an organic, natural one, like any other kind of ripening.

Discipline for Young Toddlers