As your toddler begins to experience all these changes, she may seem like a very different person from the baby you held in your arms not too long ago. Suddenly, she’s slipping and staggering, climbing and collapsing, all around your home.
Walking, a joy in itself, opens up all sorts of possibilities for her. She can climb on things, reach things, and carry things. She’s interested in motion for its own sake, and she only keeps still when she’s sleeping. In fact, studies have shown that even professional athletes cannot go through all the movements of a typical toddler day without exhaustion and muscle soreness.
Your toddler wants to know everything about her environment. She uses all five senses. Give her something to hold, and she’ll touch it, smell it, taste it, and shake it to see if it makes a noise. So many things that were out of reach before are now accessible, and she’s interested in all of them—the knobs on your dresser drawers, the pans in the cupboard, the jar of pencils on the shelf, and the fragile china figurine on the table. She can take a reasonably tidy room apart in ten minutes.
It’s no surprise that parents, trying to keep up with this little tornado, sometimes wonder, “What happened to my good baby?” What happened is that she has become a curious toddler. She’s still “good,” but she sees the world from a different perspective now that she’s up on her feet. This change places many demands on parents and other caregivers. The care of a toddler is much more strenuous than the care of a baby. Toddlerhood involves many mood swings and much negativity.
It’s no wonder some people call this age the “Terrible Two’s.” Toddlers can be happy, throw a tantrum, and laugh again, all in the space of a few minutes. They can be demanding and persistent. They are famous for the number of times they can say “no” in a day. Saying “no” is their declaration of independence: “I’m me, an important person with ideas of my own, and now that I can do things for myself, I don’t have to do everything you want me to.”
To form her own identity and begin to separate from you, your toddler must establish the differences between you and her. This can be hard on parents. That it’s a normal part of development doesn’t make it any easier to cope with, but it should be reassuring. It means your toddler is trying to grow, and that’s just what you want her to do.
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