Let your Two-Year-Old Help!

You may have been warned about the terrible two's, but don't worry. There are plenty of fun and exciting things that happen around two years old that can far outweigh the frustrating tantrums and defiance that you will most likely witness on a daily basis. It helps if you have a good understanding of why your two-year-old is doing what they're doing and why they act like they act. When you understand this developmental stage, you can help your child to move through it by providing activities that help them to move forward.

First, you should keep what you're working towards in mind. Things like sharing, imagining, playing well with others, and learning to be a leader can take a long time to learn. Children usually spend their entire second year working on these things and may not master them until well after they are three. The mental battle that they have with themselves can be very frustrating to them. They suddenly have the capacity to want to be in control and to want to do everything "all by myself", but they don't have the skills or the grasp on their emotions that they need to necessarily determine what they can and can't be in control of.

You will see toddlers at this age changing their mind a lot. Decisions are incredibly difficult and can seem very "final" to a toddler. You may notice them panicking over the choice between strawberry or chocolate milk and then following the panic with a giant tantrum. You, as a parent, just thought that you were being nice giving them a choice. To help your child in this area (and avoid a few of those fits!) give them choices whenever possible, and make it a really easy choice. For example, ask if they would rather have a spoon to drink or a chocolate milk. Sounds really silly, but hopefully your toddler will think it's silly too. Making them laugh and making the choice easy is a good way to squeeze in a lot of successful decisions. Successes help them gain the confidence that they need to make harder decisions later, like whether they want strawberry or chocolate milk.

Make other things easier too. At this stage, children can get very frustrated when they need to communicate something and can't make the words come out of their mouths. They may fully understand your language by this time, but formulating sentences takes a lot of thought. Pointing and screaming gets the point across much faster! Help your child to fill in the blanks by asking them to repeat what you say and then quickly and cheerfully complying with the spoken request.

This is a really good age to start letting your child help you as much as possible. Let them push the button on the remote, pour the milk into your cake batter, use the pump on the hand soap, whatever you can think of that makes them feel like a good helper. If you let them help with laundry, make sure that you have small children's hangers for them to use, like baby hangers or infant hangers, because regular hangers are too big for them to manage and they can get frustrated. Give them simple jobs, like folding the wash cloths in half. Praise them for doing a good job no matter what and you'll boost their self-esteem, giving them the knowledge, praise, and confidence that they need to move past this stage.