Development

How Toddlers Grow

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Published February 24th 2010, in Development, Physical Development, Toddler Years

After witnessing the amazing growth of your baby his first year, you enter a phase of slower growth combined with lots of energy.  This is the recipe for the terrible two’s where children have immense willpower, but have not reached the physical maturity to master everything they want to do.  Toddlers experience great frustration when they cannot execute their plans.

In addition to your one year old growing slower, you will notice that he eats less at mealtimes, but like to snack through out the day. Toddlers are very mobile and explore their environment through all five senses.

During the second year most toddlers will master the following milestones:

  • Walk independently without support.
  • Be able to walk backwards.
  • Climb step.
  • Start to feed themselves.
  • Drink from a cup when helped.
  • Build a tower with blocks.
  • Scribble with a pen.

As they become more confident in their own abilities they start to become even more daring, testing parents’ nerves to the limit.  From age 2 to 3  children should generally accomplish the following:

  • Walk confidently
  • Run
  • Climb stairs
  • Dig
  • Throw and kick a ball
  • Jump with two feet together
  • Take things apart and reassemble it
  • Screw and unscrew lids
  • Become aware of toilet habits.

Mastering one milestone enables your child to move on to the following learning experience.  It should be kept in mind that children are unique and achieve milestones in their own time, we cannot rush growing up.

How a Baby Learns to Communicate

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Published February 24th 2010, in Baby Years, Development, Language Development

The ability to communicate with your child through language opens up a whole new world of relationship enriching opportunities to parents.  Parents battle to understand the needs of a crying baby, but through language they can understand exactly what the problem is.  Developing the ability to use language is a complex and creative process that takes time.

Before a baby can speak, they are able to understand language.  In the process of acquiring language, a baby goes through different phases of vocalization:

  • Undifferentiated crying (from birth to one month): During this phase the baby uses crying as a call for attention.  The cry is undifferentiated, because the listener cannot differentiate between a cry indicating hunger, thirst, fear, discomfort or pain.  This tyope of cry is seen as a reflex.
  • Differentiated crying (from about 2 months): During this phase the parents are able to distinguish between the different types of crying.  The baby uses different pitches and sound patterns to indicate their needs.
  • Cooing and Babbling (from about 2 to 6 months): Cooing refers to the throat sounds babies make when they are happy and content or even excited.  Babbling refers to the repetition of simple vowel and consonant-combinations, for example “da-da-da” or “ma-ma-ma”.
  • Seven to Eight Months: The baby repeats words and sounds that he hears. This repetition is accidental or incorrect, but forms a necessary foundation for communication.
  • Nine to Ten Months: This is the phase where you find repetition of words and sounds.  Here the sounds and words are more correct and purposeful.
  • Single word sentences (from one year onwards): During this phase the baby starts saying understandable words.  He uses these words to communicate with others.  Single words are often meant to communicate complex ideas or requests, for instance the word “bottle” can mean “I am hungry” or even “I finished my bottle of milk”.
  • Use of Sentences: This is the final stage of language development.  Two word sentences is the first  sentences used, for example “Baby hungry” or “Mamma gone”.  Baby starts using more words in sentence construction, but often with grammatical mistakes.  Gradually the child becomes able to use more complex sentences to communicate with those around him.

A child of two years generally have a vocabulary of about 300 words.  At three it increases to 1000 words, at five  2000 words and when going to school he can use 3000 words accurately.  Girls tend to acquire language faster than boys, as well as children of higher social economic groups.  Intelligence also plays a role in language development.

Your Baby's Thinking Skills

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Published February 24th 2010, in Baby Years, Cognitive Development, Development

Each stage of development requires that certain tasks are mastered. Piaget, a psychologist and father, observed his own children and identified the following milestones to be achieved in the baby years:

  • Through the first two years in a baby’s life it is important to integrate perception and action. Babies learn how to use visual, auditive and tactile inputs to direct their grabbing and walking.
  • During this period the baby starts to form the concept of object permanence.  This refers to the fact that the child will keep on looking for a toy even if they cannot see it anymore.
  • Children learn to imitate and copy others.  This means that a child develops symbolic thought.

Piaget divided the first two years into 6 stages:

  • Stage 1: The use of reflexes: This period is from birth to one month. Babies respond automatically to people, events and objects in their environment through crying, suckling or grabbing.
  • Stage 2: Month 1 to 4: During this stage the infants learns how to use his inborn reflexes on the basis of experience.  Reflexes turns into learned habits.  The baby is primarly focused on his own body, but have the ability to when he accidentally discovers an action, to deliberately repeat it.The child starts to react to external stimuli and will turn his head in the direction of a sound.  The baby starts to realize there are objects outside of himself.At this stage there is no sense of object permanence, if he cannot see a toy the toy does not exist anymore.
  • Stage 3: Month 4 to 8: At this stage the baby starts incorporating external objects into his behaviour.  If he drops his rattle and hear the sound, he will repeat the action by picking up the rattle and dropping it again.Object permanence develops to the level where he is able to recognize the object even if only part of it is revealed.  If the toy is dropped he will look in the direction of where it fell and if his play with the toy is interrupted, he will return his attention to the toy again.The baby now starts imitating behaviours from others.  These behaviours are however limited to his own observable body parts and actions that he has mastered before.  He will not be able to imitate his mother’s facial expression, because he cannot see his own face.
  • Stage 4: Month 8 to 12: The child now develops the skill to execute goal oriented behaviour.  If for instance there is a bottle between him and his toy, he would be able to push the bottle out of the way and grab the toy.  He combined two actions in order to achieve his goal.Object permanence developed to such an extent that he will search for an object that he cannot see.  He wil go and search first in the place that he is used to retrieve it, even if he saw someone else placing it in a different spot.  This is because he was not responsible for that action, and remembers his previous action.At this stage imitation has developed to the point where he is able to imitate actions like facial gestures.
  • Stage 5: Month 12 to 18: This is a stage of discovery and experimentation.  The child is able to walk and therefore comes into contact with a wider world.  He is able to vary certain actions in order to observe different results.  He will for instance drop a ball from different heights to see how the ball’s bounce is affected. Through this he learns that different objects have different qualities and properties.Regarding object permanence, a child is now able to search for a toy in the place he has seen it being moved to. The child is able now to imitate behaviours that does not form part of his own behaviour repertoire.   The model has to be present in order for him to imitate behaviour.
  • Stage 6:  Month 18 to 24: Children start to develop complex solutions to problems through combining different actions that has been mastered in other contexts, to this particular problem.  They master symbolic representation.They are now also able to copy or imitate behaviour that they have seen previously.  This can be in the absence of the person they are imitating.

The period from birth to toddlerhood, shows immense development – from a child that can only use reflexes to interact, to a child that can solve problems on a concrete level.

Helping my Child to make Friends

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Published November 18th 2009, in Development, Forming Friendships, Social Development

Forming friendships are  a very important part of growing up.  Friendship or the lack there of, can really make of break a child’s experience of school and boost or damage her self esteem. I found as a parent, that I often wonder and worry about the amount and quality of my two daughters’ friendships. We all want our children to be popular and well-liked by other children and their parents – but what can we do to assist our children to become a good friend to others? 

It is very important to realize that all children are unique and that their temperaments differ.  Two children growing up in the same house might differ completely on the introversion-extroversion continuum.  One might be a social butterfly, whilst the other one might always be hiding behind your legs at birthday parties.  We should celebrate their differences and help both of them to learn the necessary social skills they will need in the future and find their own B.F.F.

What can you as a parent do?

  • Teach your child what friendship entails. Children should know what is seen as friendly behavior and what not.  Gossiping is unacceptable and hurtful behavior. In order to maintain friendships, they should continuously work at it. Point out to your child when you notice she is doing something nice for example sharing her lunch with her friend.
  • Do not push your child to be popular. Some children will have many friends and others only few.  At the end of the day it is important for your child to have someone they can confide in and trust completely.

  • Encourage diversity in friendships. I think it is beneficial to children to have friends out of all walks of life.  A child does not have to only have friends in their class at school, there should also be friends at extra-mural activities and other social groupings. You can use your child’s interests to help her meet other children with similar interests.
  • Teach your child how to effectively express herself. When a child knows how to convey her feelings and thoughts effectively, she is able to be open and honest in her friendships.  Point out to her how her attitude and even appearance can either promote social interaction or prevent it.
  • Be a good listener. Listening to your child’s conversations gives you the opportunity to pick up when she is experiencing difficulties in her friendships.
  • Model good friendship behavior. Our children are always watching us.  When we have good friendships and maintain those friendships our children learn from us and copy our behavior. Hospitality is such an important skill to learn and we as parents should strive to always be hospitable – it is not only beneficial to our own friendships, but children learn how to make their friends feel at home and act in a friendly manner.

How can you help your shy child to form friendships?

  • Use every opportunity to build friendships based on what your child finds interesting.
  • Include brothers, sisters, cousins and other potential friends in your child’s daily routine.
  • Organize playdates, but keep them small and short.  Plan ahead and have activities which your child enjoys and is good at.
  • Embrace the latest fad, whether it is silkworms or stickers.  The fad is something that the children will have in common.
  • Be a play date to your child.  This gives you the chance to see how your child plays with other children and also gives you the opportunity to model correct behavior.

Good friendships will boost your child’s confidence and self-esteem, whilst a bad friendship will leave her feeling belittled and down.  As parents we cannot choose our childrens’ friends or interfere with all the fights, but we have to monitor and guide our children for their own benefit.

When your Child Stutters

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Published October 20th 2009, in Emotional problems, Language Development, Stuttering

Many parents become concerned about stuttering when their children are between 2 and 5 years old. Children will often repeat syllables or use speech filters like “um”, “er” or “uh”. The good news is that this is often just a sign of learning and the speech problem will disappear by itself.  Most children outgrow this phenomenon by the time they turn 5 years old. For the small percentage of people who do not outgrow it, stuttering becomes a communication handicap that they will have to learn to manage and overcome.

Stuttering or also known as stammering, is a speech disorder where sounds, syllables or words get repeated or prolonged, which in turn have an impact on the fluency of speech. Children who stutter often experience blocks which are periods of silence whilst he is struggling to make a sound.  During blocks children seem to be trying to force the word out.  This might be with an open mouth or his lips squeezed together.

Examples of prolongations are:

  • Aaaaaaaaaask our teacher.
  • Pu…………….put the pencil back.
  • This is y………….yours.
  • Give it to mmmmmmm-me.

Examples of repetitions are:

  • B-b-b-b-b-b-but not now.
  • Bu-bu-bu-bu-but not now.
  • But-but-but-but not now.
  • But not – but not – but not – but not now.

In mild cases of stuttering the child repeats sounds more than twice, eg. “li-li-li-li-like” with visible tension in the facial muscles.  Their pitch tends to rise with repetition and sometimes they can experience blocks.  Disfluencies in their speech is regular.

In severe cases of stuttering more than 10% of their speech is affected by stuttering.  Great effort and tension is visible in effort to vocally communicate.  These children avoid stuttering by using other words instead of the ones giving them problems, they experience complete blocks, have many repetitions and prolongations.

What parents can do:

  • Do not put pressure on your child to speak correctly at all times, it will only lead to increased levels of anxiety and add to the stuttering.
  • Use meal times as a conversation time with your child where there are no distractions, for instance the TV.
  • Avoid trying to correct your child of finish a word for him, it will only lead to an increase in self consciousness.
  • Do not interrupt your child or ask him to start over.
  • A calm atmosphere in the house will help to address anxiety and stress that can contribute to stuttering.
  • Do not tell your child to think before speaking.
  • Always speak slowly and clearly to your child.
  • Maintain natural eye contact, even when your child is struggling to verbalize a word.
  • Allow your child the opportunity to speak for himself and finish his own sentences.

Aligned Thinking

Potty Training your Child

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Published January 26th 2009, in Potty Training

Potty training a child is a major milestone for parents and child alike.  Everyone knows that society expects competent members to be able to use a toilet – the getting there with your young child is the major headache.  There are as many theories out there as the amount of different colored potties.

The debate hinges around issues like when the right time it to potty train your child and how long the process should be.  Some theorists believe leave your child naked and a victim of his own wee and poop, whilst others believe that the child should set the pace.  All this confusion and frustration building up between the will of the parent and the natural response of the child, led to the point where potty training problems currently are the 2nd most common provocation for fatal child abuse in the US.

Just to add to the debate, I decided to share my take on potty training.  The following are the abilities your child will need to be able to start potty training from a physical perspective:

  • He must be able to sit
  • He must be able to walk
  • He must be able to stand independently
  • He must have the ability to follow simple instructions
  • He has to have the physical dexterity to pull down his pants.

From a more emotional aspect it is necessary for a child to show an interest in potty training and the toilet, as well as being cooperative.

Indicators that your child is ready to be toilet trained in addition to the above is:

  • When there seems to be some bladder control. This is when you find that the diapers stay dry for periods of 2 – 3 hours at a time.
  • When his bowel movements come at predictable times.
  • When your child asks to be changed or indicates that he feels uncomfortable in the dirty diaper.
  • When expresses interest in underwear and how toilets work.

My suggestions as to the HOW is:

  1. Buy a potty.  Involve your child in the purchase.  If he shows more of an interest in the toilet than a potty, let him choose the inner seat of the toilet and a bench to reach it easily.  Make it clear to your child it is his – give him a sense of ownership.
  2. Change your child’s diapers often in order for him to get used to the feeling of being dry.  It might be advisable to switch to cheaper diapers at this point to emphasize the feeling of being wet or soiled.  New expensive diapers draw fluid away from the skin and lock it underneath a protecting layer.
  3. Start a routine of sitting on the potty.  Your child has to be comfortable with the potty.  Start off sitting on the potty fully clothed, moving to sitting on it with a diaper and then bare-bottomed.  Do not ever force your child to sit on the potty.
  4. Model toilet behavior to your child. Let your child accompany you to the loo.  Show them how to wipe, flush and put the toilet seat down.  Answer all questions honestly.
  5. Teach him toilet words.  There are many different ways to refer to urinating and bowel movements, choose the ones that you feel comfortable with.
  6. Start putting your child on the potty at times when you suspect that he would need it.  After nap time and about 20 minutes after meals are usually good times to start with.
  7. I took both my children to the potty once every 30 to 40 minutes.  I allowed them to sit for as long or short as they wished for.  Never prevent a child from getting up from the potty.
  8. Keep an encouraging attitude despite accidents.  More important:  Expect accidents!
  9. Once some control is established, remind them to go to the potty at certain times.
  10. Reward your child with brand new underwear after the first successful attempt.  I found that Barbie and Spiderman works extremely well!
  11. Keep your child on a high fiber diet and increase his fluid intake.  This will make urinating and bowel movements easier, increasing the chances of successful attempts.  Every successful attempt will give your child a sense of achievement, leading to him being more confident about his abilities.
  12. Do not punish your child for accidents and do not reward with anything else than things naturally associated with toilet behavior.

Training your child at night might be a different matter.  I would suggest keeping diapers on at the beginning, until you find that your child stays dry.  During naptimes I would however let them sleep without a diaper.

When major events happen in a child’s life, they often do regress and bladder control is often one of the developmental areas in which the do go back a few paces.  Stay encouraging and soon, despite many accidents he will be up and going again!

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