Room to Grow

Giving Your Toddlers Independence and Encouraging Them to Explore

By Shel Franco

On a typical day, your toddler blows through the house like a cyclone. He empties your purse, rearranges your sock drawer and terrorizes the dog.

Some days, you feel like your toddler is the most uncontrollable child around, and you are the most incompetent mother. Other days, you can't stop laughing at the crazy antics. Fortunately, this seemingly bipolar disorder is nothing short of normal toddler behavior.

"Emerging mobility and curiosity combine for very challenging toddler behaviors such as running or moving away from Mom, touching everything, refusing to comply with requests, etcetera," says psychologist Carla Natalucci.

There is a method to this mayhem.

"Most learning prior to the acquisition of language is sensorimotor in nature and children are discovering how their bodies impact the world around them and how they can manipulate and sense it in a variety of ways," says psychologist Gloria Rothenberg. "[Toddlers] throw food off the high chair to observe how gravity works. Moving objects from place to place provides rudimentary information on quantity, shape and size. They also get to practice fine motor actions and develop better muscle control in their hands, fingers and arms. They learn about object permanence by repeatedly putting something in and taking it out of some container."

If you're like many moms, this matters very little when you're on your hands and knees for the fifth time in an hour, cleaning peas off the kitchen floor. So how do you give your toddler room to grow and learn without losing your mind?

Want to see more?

• Get Your Toddler to Cooperate!
• Toddlers Today MomsTalk Discussion Board