The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten. Martha Sears
at one-thirty, give a snack just before leaving home, and take along some quiet but fascinating toys. Be sure your child has had sufficient attention earlier in the day. This may help him behave better while you concentrate on the meeting. Invite him to sit on your lap while you talk.
• Provide workable playtimes. Life with a toddler can seem like a roller-coaster ride unless you know what sets off the highs and the lows. Note what prompts desirable behaviour, and cut out what stirs turmoil. Some play environments foster good behaviour in your child and fewer hassles for you. Seek out the ones that work; avoid the ones that don’t. It may be a who, when, and how-many-playmates decision. Recognize who your child has the most fun with (this may not be the child of your best friend) and the time of the day he plays best. Does he play better one-on-one or beside two or three other mates? Most toddlers do best playing alongside a carefully selected playmate with a compatible temperament. Many children under three are not developmentally ready to play together cooperatively. Playgroups for toddlers work well when the mothers are willing to be present and observant, able to be involved as the toddlers learn the social “ropes”. An alternative to same-age playmates would be four-to-six-year-old playmates for your two-year-old. The older ones like playing with “babies” and they won’t end up fighting.
Eliminate high-risk toys. Plastic bats are great for solo play but a disaster in a group. Select age-and temperament-appropriate toys. An impulsive thrower needs soft toys, not metal cars that he can use as projectiles. If a toy habitually excites squabbles among playing children, shelve it. Children under three do not yet have the developmental capacity to share. (See “Sharing”.)
Busy the bored child. A bored child is a breeding ground for trouble. Let your child be busy with you, sometimes have things to do on his own, and sometimes play with him yourself. The fourteen-to-eighteen-month-old will need you a lot. After that, a toddler is more and more able to self-stimulate.
The bored child with a busy parent is a high-risk mismatch. An attachment-parented child who has been connected well from birth will always be able to make her own fun by age four. Until then, count on the old standby: “Want to help Mummy?” Her “help” may slow you down, but this is less time-consuming than dealing with an “unbusy” child.
going from oneness to separateness: behaviours to expect
During the last half of the first year babies begin a developmental process known as hatching. Baby realizes there is a whole wide world out there apart from mother. Throughout the second year, your baby’s understanding of himself matures from a feeling of “Mummy and me are one” to “me different from mummy” to “me” as an individual. Words like “my”, “me”, and “mine” show a struggle for identity apart from the mother. Besides an intellectual desire to be “me”, the little individual now has the motor and language skills to help him be himself. How a baby develops this concept of “me”, and how the parents discipline the behaviours that naturally go along with this “me” stage, are vital to the emotional health of the child. Child and adult psychologists believe that pleasant separation experiences in early life act as a sort of psychological vaccine against the anxiety of stressful separations that come in later childhood and adulthood.
The infant who was never connected misses the healthy “Mummy and me as one” stage. This infant will have more difficulty transitioning into the healthy “me” stage. The infant who is pushed into the “me” stage prematurely is also likely to develop a shaky self-image, leading to insecurity, withdrawal, and anger. Finally, parents who misinterpret the normal behaviours that go along with this oneness-to-separateness process are likely to have the most problems with discipline.
Certain behaviours happen along the way in the child’s journey from oneness to separateness. Some of these behaviours that help him become more independent are the very ones that may get him into trouble. By understanding why these occur and how you can help, discipline becomes easier.
Ambivalence. Baby wants and needs to separate, but she is not certain how soon or how far. Baby is constantly testing what is a comfortable distance from you. One minute she’s a clinging vine, a few minutes later she’s happily playing across the room. This requires moment-by-moment parenting decisions. Baby is up and down from floor to arms like a yo-yo. If you’re relaxed, amused, and unhurried you may hardly notice. If you’re bored, hurried, or feeling needy yourself it will drive you crazy.
Stranger anxiety. Independence has its price. Anxiety in the presence of strangers begins in the last half of the first year. This is where being connected to your baby once again pays off. The connected baby relies on parents to assess the security of a situation. In an unfamiliar social situation, baby rates strangers by your reaction. She sees strangers through your eyes. If you are anxious, baby is anxious. As the “stranger” approaches, baby will notice that you reflect an “It’s OK, there’s no need to be anxious” attitude in your body language. In the cautious mind of the baby if the stranger is OK to you, she is OK to baby. Hopefully, the “stranger” will also have enough knowledge of baby development to allow time and space for this evaluation to occur. A baby knows it is inappropriate just to barge into his personal space and will react strongly against the intrusion. The parent can act as a buffer in this situation.
Some babies are more stranger sensitive than others. When I see a new baby in my surgery, I’ve noticed that the baby often reacts to me the way the mother reacts. If the baby initially clings to the mother and the mother clings to the baby, often adding an anxious “He won’t hurt you”, she reinforces the anxiety and baby clings harder. But if mother relaxes her grip and clicks right into a happy-to-be-here dialogue with me, baby often clings less to mother and cooperates with me, sensing that I am a “mum-approved” person.
The ability to create a mental image of mother helps baby to separate from her.
Separation anxiety. The fear of separating from mother is another normal development beginning in the last half of the first year. Understanding this stage helps parents cope with separation anxiety and not inflict separation when the baby is clearly saying it would make him anxious. It used to be thought that if a mother got too attached to her baby during the first year she would spoil her baby and the baby would cling to her forever. Many people still believe this, even though attachment research has shown the opposite to be true. The babies who are the most connected early on are the ones who later separate with less anxiety.
The physical and mental presence of the connected mother during play situations acts as an anxiety regulator, giving the baby the message “It’s OK to explore.” The connected infant has such a rich storage file of mental images of his mother that he is able to take mother with him mentally even when he no longer has a visual connection to her.
When encountering a strange play situation with mother, an infant has to balance the desire to explore a novel situation against the need to remain attached to the familiar caregiver. This is why even secure infants, upon entering a strange situation, initially cling to the mother before beginning to explore. Attachment parenting helps babies develop a balance between clinging and exploring. Infants check in with mother periodically for reassurance while they explore the strange situation. Mother’s presence seems to add energy to the child’s exploration. Since the infant does not need to waste effort worrying about whether mother is there or might leave, he can use all his energy for exploring. In time he will cling less and comfortably explore the environment, increasing his distance from the maternal home base, though checking in from time to time for emotional refuelling. If you watch toddlers in play groups, you’ll notice that they periodically run over to their mother, sit on her lap, and get a reassuring cuddle or even a brief chance to nurse – an emotional pit stop before darting off again to play.
Insecurely attached babies have more difficulty developing this balance. They are likely to spend more time