The Great Parenting Tasks of the Toddler Years
Note from Faith: Hi everyone! I’m sending out this reading for you to do BEFORE our first call, so that we can hit the ground running. The ideas in here are the foundation upon which all of the other content rests If you’ve already read my book you’re ahead of the game, because this reading is a slightly shorter version of Chapter 1.
The lesson starts by introducing the idea that healthy relationships are mutually responsive, meaning that both people respond quickly and positively to each other, even —and especially—when they cannot do what the other person wants. It discusses the idea that the great tasks of parenting in the toddler years are to: 1) Support our children as they learn to control their impulses and to be responsive to us; and 2) Learn to be responsive to our children’s deeper needs, rather than to their whims. Three universal human needs are introduced: the need to feel connected to others, the need for competence or mastery, and the need to know that we are contributing to something greater than ourselves.
Imagine a life where your child is happy to do what you ask, and is able to recover and move on easily when disappointed. Imagine getting all of your housework done while your child plays, or happily helps alongside you. And imagine feeling confident in your skills to help young children navigate the waters of social interactions with one another. All of these things are possible for you and your child, even if your child is extra sensitive, demanding, needy, belligerent, or all of these at the same time. I have seen it happen, not once or twice, but many times. This book will provide you with powerfully positive tools to achieve these things in your own family.
In today’s world of hurry and over-commitment, imagine a life where you support your child’s development, increase your sense of connection, and encourage your child’s capacity for deep independent play, all through activities you already do every day: dressing and undressing, brushing hair and teeth, mealtimes, laundry, washing dishes. Even if those activities are currently challenging, they can absolutely shift and even become highlights of your day. Imagine putting your child to bed and relaxing, because all of your household chores are done. Ahhhh!
Why do the images above feel so far out of reach for so many? It could be because our culture provides only fragmented images of how to create strong, positive relationships with our toddlers. We hear about the importance of staying connected to our kids, and we hear about the importance of setting and maintaining boundaries, but these two directives seem to be at odds. In fact, at any given moment with a toddler, it often seems like we must choose: do we choose to connect, or do we set that boundary? If we choose to connect and neglect the boundaries, we end up with little tyrants; if we choose the boundaries and forget to connect, we have relationships with no joy. Many people walk a tightrope between these two, falling continually to one side or the other and feeling guilty either way.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways that connection and boundaries can actually strengthen and reinforce, rather than compete with, one another. This book offers you the means to do this, and to transform your relationship with your children.
The Mutually Responsive Relationship
With babies, the route to a secure bond between parent and baby is relatively clear (and has been backed up by research): a secure bond is formed when the baby lets his or her needs be known, and the adult responds as quickly, lovingly, and effectively as possible. But what happens when those sweet babies become demanding toddlers? How does the nature of the parent-child bond shift, and how does it stay the same? What actions continue to support the parent-child bond, and what ones no longer serve it?
One thing that becomes clear is that responsiveness, while still necessary, is no longer enough. If we continue to try and do everything that our child wants, as quickly and effectively as we can, we don’t end up with secure, loving children. Instead, we end up with children who are either little dictators, or who are fearful or anxious; either way, they tend to become fragile and lack that super-important quality of resilience: the ability to bounce back when things don’t go their way.
So, what’s missing? In order to answer this question, I decided to look at the research. First I delved into what research had been done on Attachment (the term used to describe that secure bond established in infancy) in the toddler years. However, I didn’t find much on children over 18 months of age, except those being followed in long-term studies that started when they were infants or very young toddlers. So I broadened my search, and looked at parenting styles. There is quite a bit of research on this, although most is not focused on toddlers. However that research is important so it’s worth mentioning:
The Effects of Parenting Style on Children
In a study by Diana Baumrind in 1966, she observed families and identified three styles of parenting: authoritarian parenting, which is high on structure (expectations) and low on warmth. On the other end of the spectrum is permissive parenting, which is high on warmth, but low on structure. And in the middle is authoritative parenting, which is high on both warmth and structure. These authoritative parents held high expectations, while also giving their children lots of emotional support. It turned out that children with authoritative parents did better in many different ways. (Later research identified a fourth style of parenting: uninvolved parenting. The fact that you’re reading this makes me suspect that you’re not one of those parents!)
Baumrind’s work on effects of parenting style was interesting and relevant, and there are tons of parenting books written from this perspective (one of my favorites is Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids by Dr. Laura Markham). However, for the most part those books suggest reasoning with your child: explaining where you’re coming from, talking about their feelings, and ideally convincing them to do what you’ve asked. But while those techniques may work well with older children, they tend not to be very effective with toddlers.
So how do we go about being authoritative with toddlers? What does being high on warmth and high on expectations look like in in the parent-toddler relationship? To delve into this, I turned to the research once again. This time, I looked for research on toddler-specific actions that help or hinder specific interactions: what makes them smooth or rough? Enjoyable or challenging? Successful or unsuccessful? It turns out that there are lots of studies that focus on this very question. The trouble was that not only have researchers come at the topic from dozens of different angles, but almost every single researcher calls it something different. And they don’t use nice, user-friendly words. In talking about what’s happening when things are going well, one researcher calls it “contingent responsivity,” while another describes it as “affect attunement,” a third dubs it “reciprocal responsiveness” a fourth, fifth and sixth label it “social contingency,” “interactional harmony,” “dyadic synchrony,” respectively. And this is only a smattering of the research out there! Small wonder that these ideas have never made it out of academic circles.
The Mutually Responsive Relationship
While none of those terms seemed particularly approachable, I noticed that there was one idea that kept turning up again and again, even though it was described differently: the interactions that went smoothly between parents and toddlers, and relationships that were strong and healthy, were steeped in reciprocity. Not reciprocity as in constant negotiations, “I’ll-give-you-this-if-you-give-me-that,” but reciprocity as in parent and child each caring and being responsive to the other. In academic-speak, interactions were “bidirectionally coordinated,” meaning that each party accepted the influence of the other.
As I said before, in a parent-infant relationship, it’s the baby’s job to communicate her needs to the adult, and it’s the adult’s job to meet those needs as quickly and fully as possible. But in a healthy adult-toddler relationship, no longer is it the child giving all the cues and the adult doing all the responding. At the same time, neither is it a “children should be seen and not heard” model. One of my favorite researchers, Grazyna Kochanska, coined a description of this type of interaction that I liked so much I adopted it for use in this book: she said that things go most smoothly when adult and child are mutually responsive. It’s possible for adults and children to be mutually responsive (or not) in a given interaction, and the more interactions we have this way, the closer the relationship gets to being mutually responsive overall. Our goal in parenting our toddlers, then, is to develop mutually responsive relationships with these emerging and powerful individuals.
While we adults can generally control our own behaviors, the other side of it can feel more tricky, as in, “How do I get my toddler (or preschooler) to be responsive to me?” This can seem especially impossible if we’ve fallen into a pattern of behavior where our children are making frequent unreasonable demands, or throwing tantrums left and right. We parents have been practicing being responsive to our children for months or years, but our children have had much less practice in being responsive to us. How do we change that balance, and help children become responsive?
The short answer is that being responsive is a skill, and we can teach children how to do it. We do it by having high expectations, and then helping our children follow through. We don’t make our help punitive; on the contrary, we make it as fun and enjoyable as we can. We are teaching our children to be responsive to us. And how do we make doing what we’ve asked enjoyable? That’s what these classes are all about!
Let’s start by talking a little bit more about what it means to be responsive. When we’re being responsive to a baby, we’re simply doing what they want/need. But when we’re being responsive to anyone else, whether a child or another adult, we can’t always do what they want us to. Luckily, being responsive doesn’t require us to do whatever the other person wants. What it does require is two things: that we respond quickly, and that we respond positively. Both of these are possible to do even if we can’t –or won’t- do what the other person wants. Likewise, our children can also respond quickly and positively to us, even when they can’t do what we’ve asked of them. Relationships are healthiest when both parties are responsive.
Perhaps it’s not obvious what I mean when I say to respond quickly and positively when we can’t (or won’t) do what the other person wants. Let’s look at some examples. I’ll use toddlers and adults, since that’s what this book is about, but this holds true for two adults, or two children, as well.
Example 1: An adult can’t or won’t do what a child asks. 23-month-old Nikko yells, “Milk!” in an imperious tone. There’s no milk to be had, but mom could still respond quickly and positively: “Are you thirsty? There’s no milk left, but I wonder if we could find something else for you to drink. Let’s look together.” She takes him by the hand and they walk over to the fridge. But perhaps there IS milk in the fridge, but mom is rubbed the wrong way by Nikko’s demanding tone. She can respond quickly and positively, not by giving him milk while feeling resentful, but by telling him he can ask in a way that makes her want to say yes: “You can say, ‘Milk, please.’”
Example 2: A child can’t or won’t do what an adult asks. Dad asks 3-year-old Emma to get her jacket on, but the task feels overwhelming to her. Emma could respond by asking for help, or by bringing her jacket to him. Both of those responses are quick and positive, even though neither is actually doing what he asked. Or perhaps she simply doesn’t want to get her jacket on. She could still respond quickly and positively by asking, “Can I carry my jacket instead?”
In those two examples, neither person did exactly what was asked of them, but they were still responsive.
The First Great Parenting Task of the Toddler Years
Of course, children will absolutely need help and support to learn how to be responsive: it’s an enormous shift to go from being the center of the universe (as all babies are) to being half of a pair! It takes a lot of self-control to do a thing for someone when you want something different, and it can be challenging to come up with ways to respond positively when you can’t (or won’t) do what’s been asked. As we’ll discuss in Section 3, Self-control is a skill that is just beginning to emerge during the toddler years, and parenting decisions can have a significant impact on its development. So this leads us to the First Great Parenting Task of the Toddler Years:
In the toddler years, it is vital that we support our children in learning to control their impulses and become responsive to us.
This book is all about how to do that: it supplies practical ways to help toddlers and preschoolers say “yes” to us, even as they go through their own process of individuation, or are overwhelmed by big emotions. We can set them up for success, cheer them on, and help them recover when they fail. That’s a big part of what this book is about.
Establishing a mutually responsive relationship is powerfully important because being responsive to each other is not just what makes parent-toddler relationships strong: it’s what makes any relationship strong. By helping toddlers learn to be responsive to us while being responsive in return, we are setting the groundwork for them to have healthy relationships for the rest of their lives. Indeed, we would be doing them a disservice to do otherwise.
With this view of creating a healthy, balanced relationship, there is no longer a struggle between connection and boundaries. We absolutely don’t have to put connection aside to get kids to do what we’ve asked; in fact, we will often do things we know they love when asking them to do something for us, to make saying “yes” as natural and enjoyable as possible. And even when a child can’t say yes, many people find that they have more patience when they can see the child as a person who’s just learning the skill of being responsive, rather than as someone who’s being defiant. And learning to be responsive in return, without necessarily doing what they want, gives us tools as well. Now we won’t have to be at a loss when a frustrated boy has a meltdown because he wanted his milk in the froggy cup and not the monkey cup; instead we’ll know how to approach the situation in a way that helps him learn to recover from disappointment, strengthening the relationship rather than undermining it. We will be creating a mutually responsive relationship.
The Second Great Parenting Task of the Toddler Years
There are two sides to a mutually responsive relationship. One side is asking –and helping—children to be responsive to us, and we’ll explore practical ways to do that throughout the book. The other side is our own responsiveness to children. We already described how being responsive isn’t the same thing as doing what someone wants. But the waters are still murky when it comes to being responsive to a toddler. When do we do what they want, and when do we “hold firm”? How do we know what to do in a given situation? With babies, their needs and their wants are one and the same. But with toddlers, that’s not the case at all!
The way we can feel secure in our responses is to use a strong internal compass to assess our responses–an internal compass that is tuned to the young child’s needs, rather than to his desires. Which leads us to the Second Great Parenting Task of the Toddler Years:
In the toddler years, it is vital that we adjust our parenting to be responsive to our children’s needs rather than being reactive to their whims.
What does this mean? The idea that people have needs beyond those of food and shelter has been explored throughout history, and different people have come up with different classifications for our non-physical needs. This book focuses on three universal needs necessary for achieving a deep sense of belonging and usefulness. The first of these is the need for connection with others; the second is the need for competence or mastery; the third is the need to know that one is contributing to something greater than oneself, making a difference.
These needs are universal, and they are not age-dependent. The one-year-old reaches out to others, works on mastering skills, and tries to help others, and the three-year-old and the five-year-old do, too. And so do we. When we focus on being responsive to these important needs in young children, this gives us a broader perspective and a way to judge in the moment how to respond. Additionally, this book offers suggestions for setting up a life where there’s room for a child to pursue and experience each of these areas, and concrete actions we can take to promote them.
Of course there will always still be times when we can’t figure out how to connect, areas in which we’re not comfortable letting a child practice competence, or times when we don’t have time to let a child help. But even in those moments, things can still shift, if this awareness allows us to approach children’s frustrations with compassion. Let’s take a moment to look at each of these needs in turn.
The Importance of Connection. At all ages and all stages of development, human beings feel more satisfied and fulfilled when they are in authentic, meaningful relationships with each other. This “longing” may be conscious or unconscious, but we are at our best when we are able to love and be loved, to enjoy one another and be appreciated for who we are. We can be responsive to children’s need for connection by recognizing their efforts to connect with us (it may look different than you think!) and facilitating their efforts to connect with others. We’ll look at ways that toddlers delight in connecting, and how to weave these activities throughout the day. There’s no need to set aside “special time” to connect; when we focus on injecting connection into normally tricky times of the day such as transitions and tasks of bodily care (dressing and undressing, brushing hair and teeth, diapering) then our days can become much more smooth and enjoyable.
The Need for Competence. There is a sweet spot for each of us at any given time where we are neither overwhelmed nor bored, but are challenged just the right amount, confident in our abilities to handle what comes toward us. This is true regardless of age. We can be responsive to toddlers’ need for competence by allowing them to watch us, doing tasks slowly so they can join in, and giving them space to practice through independent play. We’ll discuss this in detail, and also look at a specific type of competence called self-regulation that’s both necessary for children to be responsive to us, and essential for the development of executive functioning in the brain.
The Desire to Contribute. People feel both energized and grounded when they know that they are making the world a better place, when they are helping others, and when they are contributing to something greater than themselves. Unfortunately, our culture rarely recognizes the very young child’s desire to contribute. Young children are expected to learn, and they are expected to play and have fun. They are rarely expected to be helpful. Adults are expected to help children, not the other way around! This book will look more closely at the types of real-life interactions that can meet the young child’s desire to contribute, and how to do them successfully –in ways that are enjoyable for everyone. It is this aspect of a fulfilling life that is the most absent from the mainstream messages about children, and small changes in this area can make big differences in your relationship with your child.
Even Toddlers Can Live a Life that’s Fulfilling
The idea that children could live a fulfilling life in the present is much different than the message we get about children from our everyday world, which encourages us always to think of what they need for their future development. In supporting their development, we work to provide enrichment activities for them. We think about ways to stimulate them. We do our best to spend “quality time” with them. We teach them and help them and manage their behavior and wait for them to reach the next milestone, and the one after that, and the one after that. It can sometimes be exciting, but it can also feel strangely stressful and boring at the same time.
On the other hand, when we consider the universal needs of connection, competence and contributing that even very young children have, this knowledge changes everything because when these needs are met then children can live a life that’s not just filled with activity, but that’s actually fulfilling–not sometime in the future, but right now. With this new awareness of children’s needs, we can be responsive to them in new ways. Suddenly many of their previously-frustrating actions will make new sense, and our responses can shift. If you are living a life where you’re constantly butting heads with your child, know that it really is possible to make changes that will boost your child’s contentment and strengthen your relationship, all while making your own life more enjoyable.
What might this look like? When you recognize your child’s longings to feel connected to yourself and others, you can weave moments of connection into the necessary parts of the day, and respond to refusals as requests for connection. When you recognize your child’s longing for competence and to learn new skills, you can do things in an expansive way that allows your child to participate, and you can back off to give her room to explore her world through independent play. And when you recognize your child’s longing to contribute, you can allow and encourage him to help in real, meaningful tasks that make your household run on a daily basis. When we work to create a life that has space for children to do those things, then suddenly we and they can be on the same team, pulling in the same direction, and our days can go more smoothly. When we can be responsive to these deep-seated, universal needs, then children will be better able to weather the storms of not having every whim granted. When these three needs are met, life may not be easy, but it feels good.
When we are responsive to children in this way, then we can also call on them to be their best selves more often: helpful, flexible, able to roll with the punches and recover quickly when things don’t go their way all the time; in short, they will be able to be responsive to us when we ask it of them. It will take work to establish a mutually responsive relationship, but you’ll be laying the groundwork for a close and productive relationship with your child for the rest of your life. Let’s begin!
[Summary Box]
Healthy parent-toddler relationships are mutually responsive: where both parties respond quickly and positively to one another, even –and especially- when they can’t do what the other person wants.
The Two Great Parenting Tasks of the Toddler Years:
- In the toddler years, it is vital that we teach our children how to be responsive to us, and support them as they practice that skill.
- In the toddler years, it is vital that we adjust our parenting to be responsive to our children’s needs, rather than reactive to their whims.
We can use focus on the Universal Needs of Connection, Competence, and Contributing to set an internal compass in our responses to children. Childhood is not just a time of preparation for adulthood, but is as valid as any other time, and children long to live a life that’s fulfilling, just like we do.