Toddlerhood series : How can I help my child behave?

• Keep your toddler busy. Keeping your toddler busy may sound like an absurd suggestion, since toddlers are seldom still for a moment. But by providing constructive outlets for his energy, you can

encourage your toddler to behave well. When he seems fussy or cranky, he may settle down if you offer him a distraction or make him laugh. He enjoys many kinds of toys—pull toys, play clay, big

cardboard blocks, simple wooden puzzles, cars and trucks, riding toys, toy telephones, and computers. He also likes lots of things you might not think of as toys—a wooden spoon to bang on a

pot, or a stack of plastic containers to build with. Don’t forget the great outdoors, either. You can set up wonderful pastimes outside (some of them indoors, too, with proper precautions). Give him a shallow pan of water and some kitchen utensils—a plastic measuring cup, a set of measuring spoons, a plastic turkey baster, and a sieve, and he’ll be happy for a surprisingly long time. Give him a spoon to dig in the dirt with, and a bucket to fill and empty. Go for walks, and talk to him about the things you see—trees, buses, dogs, other children. Visit playgrounds that offer a variety of climbing equipment. The busier you can keep him with acceptable activities, the less time he’ll have for things that are dangerous or destructive.

• Set limits on what he’s allowed to do. It can be hard for parents to set limits for active children. You want your child to love you. But your job isn’t to be your child’s favorite person all the time. It’s to

keep your toddler safe from harm and help him grow in appropriate ways, even when he might prefer to have all the freedoms of his big brother. Your child needs you to ask him to do some things he won’t like, and keep him from doing others that he would like. He needs you to set a consistent bedtime for him, to keep him from hitting other children, and to let him know he can’t fill up on candy every day just before dinner. He may react angrily when you put limits like these on his behavior, and that’s natural. It’s probably a sign that you’re doing you’re job as a parent if he occasionally stomps away or yells, “I hate you!”

• Remove unnecessary temptations. Keeping your child away from temptations might seem to be an impossibility. After all, your toddler is at an age when everything seems to tempt him—the fragile vase on a living-room shelf, the hot cup of coffee on the breakfast table, the scissors you’re using to clip a few coupons. But you and your toddler will have fewer struggles if you can remove (or take other steps to protect him from) the items that could harm him or that you don’t want destroyed. Right now you never know what he’ll want to get into, so the best approach is to simply keep him away from anything you don’t want him to touch, swallow, or use as a plaything.

Source : Questions Parents Of Toddler Ask. Ceridian Corporation.2001