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Home › Articles › Discipline › Revenge of the Toddler

Revenge of the Toddler

Empowering Your Spirited Child

By Laura Cone

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Toddlers seem to take delight in making messes. Perhaps nothing is more frustrating than when your toddler finds all your carefully organized files and gleefully tosses the important papers into the air.

Turn your head for a moment and you may find raw eggs in your carpet or cherry stains on the ceiling. Sometimes it's hard for parents to know whether their toddler is trying to be malicious and revengeful, having an accident or simply being playful.

Getting Enough Zs
Mary Sheedy Kurcinka,author of Kids, Parents and Power Struggles: Winning for a Lifetime(HarperCollins, 2000), advises parents to take a look at whether their cranky toddler is getting enough sleep. "Without sleep, then kids can't manage emotions," says Sheedy Kurcinka, who is also the author of Sleepless in America: Is your Child Misbehaving or Missing Sleep (HarperCollins, 2006) and founder of the Spirited Child and Power Struggles workshops. "They are also clumsier. They are not open to your guidance. They are cranky because they are exhausted."

Sheedy Kurcinka says toddlers need an average of 13 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. Young toddlers, under 17 months, usually need a morning and an afternoon nap, she says. The child may have one nap for an hour and another for two hours. After 17 months, their daytime sleep may be consolidated into one nap in the afternoon.

Sheedy Kurcinkasays some of the signs a child is ready for a nap is if he is having trouble managing emotions. Second, he may become clumsy or throw things. Third, a child can't stay focused. "That's another thing for toddlers," says Sheedy Kurcinka. "You need to turn the TV off even in the background. That really diminishes their focus on a toy. They will have much longer focus if there is not a television on in the background." Fourth, if your child is not able to get along with others, it may mean he is getting tired and needs a nap.

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