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Toddlers Testing Limits
How to Minimize Conflicts and Maximize Cooperation
By Amy Henry
Snuggling up with our babies, we eagerly anticipate their first words, and delight in imagining how they will confide the wonders of their emerging world. That's why it's such a shock as those "babies" gain their feet and tentatively toddle away from our embrace – and that the word they relish most is "No!"
The toddler's mania for control, for refusing to cooperate and testing limits, drives even the most unflappable parent to the edge at times. OK, most of the time. But it plays a significant role in the child's developing sense of self and her place in the world.
"Saying 'no' and testing limits teach a toddler how the social world operates, what is allowed and what is not allowed in her cultural milieu and the limits of her power," says Dr. Alicia F. Lieberman, a professor of psychology at UCSF, Department of Psychiatry, and author of The Emotional Life of the Toddler (The Free Press, 1993).
"No" is toddler shorthand for "No, I'm not your clone." She's on a do-or-die mission to prove she's separate from Mom and Dad. That she's a power in her own right.
"Sam definitely likes to be in charge," says Chris Kingsley, a stay-at-home mom from Amherst, Mass., says of her son, age 2. "If you tell him to do something, he acts like he doesn't hear you."
The toddler's increased locomotion and rapidly developing language also fuel this drive to be "in charge." Objects she could only look at in infancy, she can now touch and handle. She can verbally reject what is offered and make clear her own preferences. It's a heady new world, but not one without bumps. The toddler constantly confronts situations that make her feel small and helpless as well as strong and powerful. She has to reconcile her desire to become competent and independent with her craving for her parents' approval and protection. She needs to test limits to figure out where the boundaries are, but she cannot set her own boundaries. For that, she relies on feedback from her parents.
