Great Expectations: The Toddler Years

Have you wondered why your toddler’s emotions can be so up and down? That seemingly easy-going baby is now calm and positive one minute, then quickly upset and throwing a fit the next. Huge surges of affection can be quickly followed by sudden fits of rage. There seems to be little or no predictability in your child’s emotions.

During this stage, your toddler will be actively figuring out how to put words to his feelings and he’ll be starting to realize that other people have feelings, too. It will take a long time, though, until you can expect your little one to be completely aware of his emotions or to be able to express how he’s feeling inside.

During toddlerhood, developing empathy for others begins gradually. With a lot of practice, he’ll start learning how to manage and channel his strong emotions in constructive, rather than destructive, ways. (Some people never seem to master this, even after they’re “all grown up”!)

So we’re going to peer into toddlers’ emotional world, which often dictates how they operate. Learn about what makes your toddler tick, and find lots of ideas for how to foster his awareness, communication, and ability to bounce back from life’s inevitable stresses.

To understand why emotions are so important during toddlerhood, we’ll begin by looking at the basic engine that runs your toddler’s central processing unit—his brain. The powerful forces at work inside your child’s brain help to explain why a toddler can be so perplexing, excitable, changeable, and sometimes downright resistant and moody.

Chemicals help to convey messages across nerve connections, called synapses. Your child’s “switchboard” is so complex that a single brain cell may connect with as many as fifteen thousand other cells.

By the time your toddler reaches his third birthday, his amazingly dense brain will have formed about 1,000 trillion connections, about twice as many as an adult’s. When he is a teenager his brain will start to seriously pare back on unneeded connections and start imposing order out of the thick entanglement of neurons and mental pathways. By adulthood, all the small side paths, the potential directions his brain could have taken but didn’t, will have completely disappeared.¹

Like a living, electrical loom, a young child’s brain is constantly in motion, weaving new patterns day and night to create a dynamic map of who he is, what he is going to become, and how he will fit into the world in which he was born.

Here’s what happens to our brains over time. At about the eighth week of gestation, the brain orchestrates all the key processes that are key to survival—heartbeat, breathing, reflexes, and so on—and then connects together the many other parts that run the body, such as the emotion centers. Then your baby’s brain generates about 250,000 new brain cells per minute. During his first year following birth, his brain nearly doubles its weight and turns into a kind of complex, organic electrical switchboard.

At around the midteens, the brain links together the layers of the executive cortex, in the front of the brain, in preparation for adulthood. The executive cortex oversees higher thinking processes, such as the ability to concentrate, think abstractly, hold back emotional impulses, make wise decisions, and solve complex problems.

During the toddler stage, such higher mental processes simply haven’t developed yet, but the areas that control emotion are very much up and running. This helps explain why your toddler is uninhibited, impulsive, and repetitive. His limited memory and awareness of others’ feelings, meltdowns and frustrations, and inability to put words to feelings are all a result of normal brain development. (Interestingly, as the brain begins to shut down at the end of life, elders may exhibit similar, toddlerlike behaviors.)

Your toddler isn’t purposely being willful or spoiled with his testy behaviors, but his active brain still has a lot of growing to do. As different areas of your toddler’s brain connect while others don’t, your toddler may seem to behave in “fits and starts” and be unpredictable. Sometimes, when the brain is being challenged or becomes overstimulated, a full-scale (but brief) meltdown will occur. But take heart, because this, too, shall pass. At about 36 months, a calmer and more amenable child will appear.

During the toddler stage, experiencing feelings and learning how to connect feelings to actions and words are two of your child’s most important developmental tasks. Research has shown that toddlers’ understanding of emotions and feelings grows right alongside their understanding of language. And, like learning to climb up and down stairs or being able to communicate well, emotional facility takes time and lots of practice.

A few toddlers might begin to use words to describe their feelings as early as 20 months, such as “happy,” or, more rarely, “sad.” By about 24 months, at least half of all toddlers in one study were able to express at least one word for how they were feeling, such as “sad” or “mad,”² but they couldn’t always read the difference in those two expressions on people’s faces. Later two-word sentences, such as “I ’fraid,” or “Mommy happy” emerge.³ This research has been corroborated by many similar studies.

While your toddler’s brain is busily wiring up its higher mental processes, there comes a period of time when his comprehension far exceeds his ability to express himself. That’s when squealing, biting, tantrums, and other expressions of extreme frustration peak. Around 20 months to 30 months of age, your toddler’s verbal abilities will start improving at a rapid pace, and simultaneously emotional storms will start to calm and lose their intensity. (There are always exceptions, of course, such as toddlers with slowed language development.)

By the time your toddler reaches his third birthday, he will seem positively calm in comparison to the tumultuous year and a half that preceded it. He will be able to express his feelings in more detail, talk about feelings remembered from the recent past, and apply “feeling words” to how he perceives other people’s emotions, such as happy or sad. Some parts of the emotional world will remain out of his grasp, such as the fact that someone could feel two different things at the same time.

By the end of toddlerhood, some children will be able to combine their newly acquired feeling words into simple sentences, showing that they are aware of someone else’s feelings, or they will invent other feeling-word combinations.⁴ But until your toddler acquires more skill in communicating what he’s feeling, he will sometimes become supremely frustrated, especially since most toddlers implicitly expect their grown-ups to understand what they’re feeling, even though they can’t express it. (For more on tantrums, see Chapter 4, and for more on how toddler language develops, see Chapter 5.)

As his ability to form thoughts and elaborate what’s going on inside him evolve, your toddler will resort to facial expressions, gestures, body language, and sometimes screams and wails in his attempt to convey his exasperation.

At the beginning of toddlerhood, your child will likely be practicing how to connect feelings with words, weather “feeling storms,” comfort himself, and overcome fears. During his preschool years, he’ll make huge leaps in his ability to express and control his emotions and understand the feelings of others.

When and how emotional abilities mature is unique to each child, but here are some general guidelines for when things happen, beginning at birth, through toddlerhood:

AGE	ABILITY
Beginning at birth	From the beginning, your child’s body shows feelings. His lips, chin, forehead, eyes, and eyebrows all express interest, pleasure, joy, disgust, fear, and surprise. He tries to self-soothe by sucking his fists or fingers. If too overwhelmed, he may withdraw, turn away, or become sluggish and hard to awaken.
3 months to 6 months	He reads facial expressions and can discriminate between happiness, anger, surprise, and other emotions in others. He shows anger when he’s restrained, such as by being restrained or blocked.
9 months to 12 months	He expresses positive and negative emotions, including stranger anxiety. He’s possessive of caregivers and mistrusting or fearful of others. He might cry when viewing someone else in distress.
12 months to 18 months (and older)	He freely expresses a full range of emotions. Self-awareness grows alongside his understanding of language. He gains a clearer sense of the person he is, what he wants, and where he wants to go.
18 months to 24 months (and older)	He imagines doing things before enacting them. He shows frustration when others don’t seem to understand his thoughts or feelings. He may offer a toy or other comfort item to someone who seems upset or sad. Due to separation anxiety, he vacillates between wanting to be independent and feeling vulnerable and needy.
24 months to 36 months	Emerging feelings of embarrassment, guilt, and pride are signs your toddler is more aware of himself as a separate person. His sense of self and heightening awareness of his powers (or lack thereof) continues to expand. He may use single words that express feelings, such as “happy,” “sad,” “mad,” “tired,” or “scared,” most often used to convey distress and ask for help. Affectionate gestures emerge, and he may express “I love you” or a variation of these important “connection words.”
36 months (and older)	He may pretend to cry or be angry, or imitate others’ distress.

Raising a child with warmth, acceptance, and affection has a lot to do with how well he will be able to cope with his own emotions. Being emotionally supported by you can have a profound effect on his self-esteem, how connected he feels with you, and how he relates to others throughout his lifetime, including his life partner.⁵

During this emotional time in your toddler’s life, most of his lessons about feelings will come from you, his parents. As your toddler’s primary coach, you will be teaching him about feelings by what you say and the way you model emotion toward the significant others in your life. Some parents are gifted emotional teachers; others are not so good—perhaps because they’re still in the process of learning how to deal with feelings themselves and how to express them.

At the same time, you will be demonstrating which of your toddler’s emotions are acceptable, and which, if expressed, could get a child in trouble. If you tend to yell and shout when you get angry or upset, or to strike out physically, your toddler will be likely to model those behaviors in his interactions with others.

Your toddler is working on higher-level skills that include how to control impulses and delay gratification, how to read other people’s body language and other cues to figure out what they’re feeling inside, how to feel empathy for others, and ultimately how to use his inner thoughts for managing life’s inevitable ups and downs, and build resilience.

When it comes to expressing emotions, most parents are more influenced by gender than they realize. Research shows that parents show their own emotions differently depending upon whether they are communicating with a boy or a girl. They model a greater range of emotions for their girls than for their boys, which gives girls an advantage when it comes to expressing themselves.⁶

One study found that when viewers were told they were observing a baby girl’s expression of emotion (whether the baby was actually a girl or not), parents interpreted the baby’s emotion as “fear.” On the other hand, if they thought the baby was a boy, they labeled the boy’s emotion as “anger.”⁷ Another study found that parents tended to smile at a boy if he was angry, but they frowned at an angry girl.⁸

Parents, especially fathers, have also been found to respond more positively to boys’ irritability and negative emotions than to the same emotions in girls.⁹ That may have to do with parents’ beliefs about how acceptable certain temperamental attributes are for boys versus girls which leads them to react differently depending upon a child’s gender.

Observational studies show that as children, boys come to expect their parents will respond negatively to their expressions of sadness, and they therefore express less sadness. Girls expect their mothers to react negatively if they express anger and to react positively if they express sadness, and so they express less anger and more sadness than boys do.¹⁰

On the other hand, parents may discourage boys from expressing certain other emotions. An upset little boy might not want to be held and stroked as a young toddler or, as he ages, might be strongly instructed (directly or indirectly) that “big boys don’t cry” or that he should “calm down,” and so on.

For a toddler, learning how to regulate emotions doesn’t mean making them disappear or changing them from one feeling to another. Instead—like learning to operate the volume control on an iPod—your toddler will need to learn how to modulate his feelings so they’re either less intense or more intense and how to slow down strong emotions that make him “get carried away.”

Not all toddlers are equally gifted when it comes to emotional control. A shy child may feel anger or sadness equally as strong as an outgoing and very expressive child, but not have the tools (or confidence) to express what he’s feeling outwardly. Instead, he may withdraw, or suddenly and unexpectedly strike out at others in his desperate attempt to manage strong feelings that threaten to overwhelm him.¹¹

Children have the ability to alter how long they feel something and to manage emotional changes, such as by muting their excitement when they enter a birthday party, appropriately expressing their sadness when they need to be cuddled and nurtured, and using emotional displays to get something they want, as in the candy bar at the grocery store checkout.

It will take years and lots of practice for your child to learn how to balance himself and his feelings and how to express them. Again, some toddlers will do it better or sooner than others, but it is no reflection on the child’s character or his future personality.

As you’ve probably already discovered, one emotionally charged word that takes on special significance during the toddler stage is the word no. For a toddler, no can mean more than one thing. It could be his way of reminding himself “don’t do that,” or he could use the word to tell you something’s missing that he needs: “No milk!” Then again, it could also be an attempt to command someone else to leave him alone or not take away something he is clinging to, as if he was saying, “No! That’s mine!”

There are ways to help your toddler understand and express his feelings. Let’s discuss five possibilities.

While your toddler’s word skills are still in formation, you may be able to teach him sign language for feelings, which may help him express himself and diminish his sense of frustration at not being able to communicate.

For instance, there are signs to express sadness (sad face and rubbing tear from eye), anger (scowling face and fist), and happiness (fingers on either side of a big grin) that you and your toddler practice using with one another. There are a number of resources (including free online information and videos) for teaching your toddler to sign, such as the Signing Time! Web site. Or you can invent your own.

Some picture books may help to show an older toddler what feelings are all about. Saxton Freymann’s How Are You Peeling? features large photographs of fruits and vegetables portraying different emotions. Todd Parr’s The Feelings Book uses large stick figures of people and animals to demonstrate different feelings with a touch of silliness, and Anthony Lewis’s Carrots or Peas? is a board book that invites toddlers to determine whether the child is happy or sad on each page. Dr. Seuss’s My Many Colored Days is a nonrhyming, simple book about day-to-day feelings.

Clip images from magazines, online sources, and elsewhere of babies, children, and adults showing feelings. Place the images into a small photo album that your older toddler can thumb through. Talk about what the faces must be feeling. A mirror can help you and him to play a mimicking game for expressions. Looking into the mirror, use great emotion when you say, “I am feeling s-o-o-o happy!” Repeat using the words sad or mad.

As long as he doesn’t damage property or hurt someone, your toddler should be allowed to express feelings, even angry ones. If he is unable to put feelings into words, you can help by expressing them for him: “You’re really mad about that.” “You are sad that I am going.” You can ask him, “How does that make you feel?” “Can you say the word mad?” to encourage him to put words to his feeling states.

Here’s a quick reference to help you read your toddler’s emotions.

• Pause. Slow down; take a minute to read your toddler’s cues to see if you can discern what he may be feeling.

• Decide. Figure out if this is a good moment for teaching about emotions.

• Validate. Go eye to eye and emphatically (and simply) express what you sense your child is feeling. Keep trying until you find the brief statement that brings a look of recognition from your toddler. (That makes you feel sad. Or: You want to go home NOW!)

• Control. Take action or set limits if necessary while exploring with your child alternatives for how the problem could be solved. (We have to stay here now, but you can hold my keys for me. Or: Do you want us to go home now? We can go home now.)

Your toddler will be encouraged to communicate his feelings by mimicking others and learning new words, such as bored, confused, comfortable, excited, fed up, impatient, nervous, proud, relieved, scared, tense, and tired. Hearing these words can lay the groundwork for your toddler’s emerging awareness of the complexities of human emotions.

Before age 8 months or so, your child didn’t have a concept of what is called “object permanence.” That is, if he couldn’t see it, it didn’t exist—whether “it” was a toy or a parent.

During toddlerhood, your child realizes that if he drops his cup from his high chair, it still exists (albeit on the floor), and, in fact, the cup often reappears (when you pick it up) for him to drop again, and again. He also understands that you still exist even after you drop him off at, say, day care. But he doesn’t know when you’re coming back, which can lead to tears, because he prefers to be with you.

Walking away from your toddler’s pitiful, teary face can be downright heart-wrenching for you. Separation anxiety may make you worry or evoke pangs of guilt for leaving him, but his reaction is a sign of the healthy attachment the two of you have built together.

Fortunately, most separation-anxiety dramas are short-lived. Although it may be tempting to try to protect your toddler out of empathy for his distress, such as when you leave him in child care, you may discover, however, that your pulling back to let him solve the problem, rather than rushing in to rescue him, could help to lessen teary episodes. You’re nudging him toward managing strange situations and building his confidence based on experience.

If your toddler is in child care and cries, clings, or reacts strongly to your departures, it helps to plan in advance how you will react so you can act consistently each time the issue comes up. Here are some suggestions for easing separation woes:

• Ask for the caregiver’s help and advice. Most children’s separation dramas are momentary and quickly over. Let your toddler’s teacher help you come up with strategies (and distractions) to make separations less challenging, such as presenting an enticing new toy or a mirror to look at.

• Prepare ahead of time. Images may help an older toddler who has separation issues. Ask the children’s librarian at your local library to recommend simple children’s books about separations and going to child care. Consider creating your own picture album of the center, its children, and teachers to help build positive anticipation for going to the center. Francesca Rusackas’s I Love You All Day Long is a sweet story about separations and love. Elizabeth Verdick’s Bye-Bye Time is a simple dad-and-child separation story.

• Get acquainted with the new place. If you will be starting your toddler off with a new caregiver or at a new child-care center, try a “test drive” for a few days when you drop by and sit and watch your child play and adjust. Hanging around as a “teacher’s aide” will help you to get to know the other children there, too, so that you feel better and less torn about leaving your child behind.

• Start gradually. If you have some flexibility in your schedule, try starting your child in a new care setting for just two hours a day so he can become secure in the concept that if you go away, you will come back.

• Stay positive. Try not to convey your fears and worries to your child. Always talk about child care as an upbeat experience. At the end of the day, talk with teachers so you know the highlights of your toddler’s day, learn the names of other children there, and even consider scheduling a playdate with one of his preferred playmates to build familiarity.

• Use in-car preparation. While driving to child care in the morning, talk about where you’re going and name the teacher and some of the children who will be waiting there to see your toddler. Reinforce how you’re going to return, put him in his car seat, and drive him home “after lunch.”

Or you could explain it this way: “You’re going to play with your friends now, and I am going to see my friends at work. After you have lunch and a nap, I’ll come back in the car to drive us both home.”

• Mirror his feelings. Let your toddler know that you are aware of his distress. “I’m sorry you’re sad, but I have to leave in three minutes.” Then spend a few minutes with a ritual of cuddling or reading a book before bidding a quick adieu.

• Relax and be affectionate. Good-byes need to be brief, affectionate, and end with a clear statement that you’ll be coming back and when: “I’ll be back after lunch.” Leave without hesitation and resist the urge to peek back in on him.

• Share the job. Let your partner or a grandparent take your child to school on designated days. He’ll build familiarity and trust with other trusted adults, you won’t have to manage the whole responsibility every day, and your child will learn that he can manage this.

• Avoid long absences. Because separation is a big issue for your child, try to avoid overnight absences, which can heighten his fear of being abandoned. When there’s just no avoiding a separation, use the same methods of reassuring that you will be back, when you’ll be back, and what you can look forward to when you return.

Fear is a normal emotion for humans of all ages. It is nature’s way of alerting us to react to danger, and it helps protect us from threatening situations. But because toddlers are more sensitive emotionally than older children and adults, they are still learning how to cope with changes and the unfamiliar.

Studies show that toddler fears appear and disappear in an ordered, patterned way that is similar from one child to another. Each new developmental stage brings its own characteristic fears, and as your toddler matures, what he fears will change. Some toddlers, though, are more cautious and fearful by nature, while others appear so fearless that they often endanger their own safety.

Although it’s impossible to take away all of your toddler’s fears, some can serve a useful purpose, such as the fear of cars on a busy street or the fear of unfamiliar dogs. And sometimes toddlers can be strongly affected by their parents’ fears, such as the fear of spiders, air travel, or night sounds.

Over time, as your toddler gradually begins to become familiar with the unknown, his experiences in mastering unfamiliar things and situations will give him confidence rather than causing him to draw back or shrink away. Wherever your toddler is on the fear continuum, it’s important to help him learn to deal with fear in a way that preserves his dignity and self-worth.

• Acknowledge and accept the fear. Don’t make fun of your toddler’s fears. Talking about fears helps children to work them out and helps to make events less frightening. Ask your child how he is feeling: I wonder if you are feeling afraid? Does this make you afraid? Yes, being in the dark can feel scary.

• Deal with the monster. If the monster in the closet is real to your child, then deal directly with the monster. Kick him out of the house. Admonish him loudly to leave and never come back. If fear of the dark is the problem, leave a dim light on, or hand over a childproof and easy-to-turn-on flashlight for shedding light on the situation.

• Tell the truth. Telling your child that shots or other medical procedures won’t hurt may make him feel that he is alone in his fear and must deal with it all by himself. Instead, describe in as much detail as you can what’s coming up, with the reassurance that he will only feel it for a moment (snap your fingers), but only if that’s truly the case.

• Rehearse and reassure. To help your toddler feel less threatened, rehearse exactly what is going to happen, then give your child honest reassurance.

• Distract. Rather than trying to dissuade your toddler from feeling fear, consider an enticing alternative that takes his mind off of his fear. He may warm up if his focus is taken off of the fearful.

As you will quickly learn, toddlers cling to all things familiar, whether it’s a favorite blanket, a stuffed bear, a beloved pacifier, a favored cup, or a certain kind of cracker. These obsessions can be tiresome to adults, but predictability can be very reassuring to a toddler who is discovering so many new things.

Starting around 2 ½ and peaking between ages 3 and 4, repetitive behavior often morphs into a single-minded interest in a character, animal, or favorite color. You can watch your toddler change from passively seeing imaginary figures on television or in books to actually being able to pretend that he is the character that has captured his interest.

As toddlers’ capacity to imagine soars, they often become obsessed with certain colors, such as the color blue for boys, with fictional characters such as a cartoon superhero, or favorite videos and books that they insist on watching over and over. Or the obsession may be with a specific toy that seems to offer comfort and security, and may even seem like a real being to your child whose head is rapidly becoming filled with fantasies and ideas.

During this phase, you will discover your child slipping out of “reality” and into his own pretend world where he gets to try on different personas. Sometimes pretending can help your child feel more powerful and better able to cope with things that are scary, such as going to the dentist’s office, or pretending to be strong and invincible might help him find a way to overcome a fear of being injured or victimized.

An outgoing child is likely to be very creative and dramatic and to get very deeply involved in his imaginary scenarios. On the other hand, a quiet, introverted child is more likely to do quiet, private things, such as collecting toys or cars and lining them up in a certain order that can’t be disturbed without some protest.

Besides helping your child cope with his fears, pretend play also helps your toddler relate to other children, even nonverbally, especially when the pretending is shared, maybe because both are wearing similar clothing and props, such capes, cowboy boots, or ballet tutus, or they are playing with blocks or trucks on the floor together.

Enduring your child’s obsession can get tiring after a while, especially when he constantly corrects you and insists that you call him by his pretend name, rather than his real one, or you’re forced to return home to retrieve his favored object, accidentally left behind.

It makes sense to simply yield to your child’s obsession, as long as it’s reasonable, rather than trying to make him buck up and “face reality.” Still, there may be times when you have to put your foot down, such as if his obsession interferes with accepted behavior in public. At those times, one way to negotiate with your tot is to set limits about where costumes and other security props can be used and where they are considered off-limits.

The obsessions—some parents and early childhood professionals prefer to call them “passions”—will usually fade away on their own before your child reaches kindergarten. If not, or if your child is doing strange repetitive behaviors and not relating to others well, then it may be time to discuss your concerns with your toddler’s pediatrician or a child development specialist.

When you think about it, toddlers have a lot to be angry about. They’re little. They can’t have most of the things they want. They fail at many things they attempt. Bigger people are always telling them what to do, and those people sometimes have loud, scary voices and strong, large bodies.

It takes time for toddlers to learn to modulate their anger. Sometimes even the most quiet and reserved child can lash out in anger because he still doesn’t know how to respond to others, especially to other children who feel threatening to him. His first impulse may be to withdraw, but if he feels cornered, he may hit or bite.

Your toddler’s aggression could be triggered by another child who grabbed his toy or hurt him. It could be a reaction toward an unfamiliar grown-up who prevented him from doing something, or someone who confined him when he wanted to roam. Or perhaps there was a significant family change, such as the arrival of a new baby, a move, an impending separation or divorce, or a change in caregivers. Toddler aggression is often expressed by screaming, hitting, or kicking.

Angry lashing out happens because toddlers don’t have any other channel for handling strong feelings of frustration. Nor do they possess the ability to negotiate their way out of situations. By the time your toddler reaches kindergarten, anger won’t usually explode in him like it does during the toddler years. By then most children will have learned how to better manage those impulsive urges—such as by pouting, sulking, and whining. (You can find more tips on managing toddler aggression in Chapter 4.)

• Watch for anger cues. Most toddlers will give physical signals that they’re getting frustrated and are about to act out. Look for clamped jaws, a furrowed brow, tightened facial muscles, or grimacing. It makes sense to intervene. Express words for what you’re seeing while you plan your next move: “I can tell that you are starting to get mad,” then act as quickly as you can to either talk your child through the trouble (using empathy and age-appropriate vocabulary), distract him from what is annoying him, or remove him from the situation.

• Don’t take it personally. Toddler anger should not be perceived as a personal insult. Just because he’s supremely upset doesn’t mean that your child is bad or that you have failed as a parent. If you are who is he angry at, chalk it up to the burden of parenting. As tiring and trying as this period of development may be, it actually is a sign that your child is right on schedule, moving toward becoming a strong, independent person who can cope with the emotional distresses of life.

• Be realistic. Simply telling your toddler to calm down is unlikely to change his behavior…the first or maybe even the tenth time. It will take lots of repetitions to finally sink in. Remember, his brain isn’t wired yet to rationalize.

• Draw the line. Your toddler’s anger doesn’t give him free rein to hit, push, pull hair, or hurt anyone. Issue a short, strong “NO hitting!” followed by the consequence for doing it again. When he hits again—and he will—be consistent, no matter how tiring it is, and follow through on the consequence each and every time.

• Teach alternatives. Offer lots of chances for your toddler to express his feelings, including anger, in acceptable ways. Venting strong feelings and excess energy in safe play areas can help, as can pretend play with toys and dolls when your toddler develops the mental capacity to do that. Make it okay for him to pound a pillow or to have one doll hit another doll, since it is “just pretend.” Offer physical alternatives to striking, such as suggesting, “When you are angry you can stomp up and down.”

• Help with transitions. Some toddlers are better at transitions from one activity to another. A 3-year-old who loses control when he is tired or abruptly separated from something he enjoys doing needs several advance alerts for upcoming change. Some children like the neutrality of a timer bell to signal the end of an activity. Again, consistency and predictability are key.

• Practice self-calming strategies together. Try playing games with your older toddler to teach him calming skills, such as lying on his back and making a book on his belly go up and down with deep breaths. Or make up an “angry song” that the two of you can share, or a quick story about an angry lion or other animal that can help put his anger in perspective. And sometimes, just offering a drink of water or a quiet moment may help to slow down the physical escalation of anger.

Empathy is the ability to put oneself in someone else’s place and imagine how that feels. A younger toddler might not be able to empathize until later, when he understands emotions better. Having empathy means that your toddler is aware that someone else’s distress is separate from his own, but it is a distress that he can relate to.

Some scientists now believe that empathy is hard-wired into babies’ brains. A newborn next to another crying baby will start crying, too, and even the youngest babies will cry when they hear the recorded voice of another baby crying, but not the recorded sound of their own voices, which shows that some very basic empathic connections are already there. By 6 months of age sympathy crying has mostly diminished, but babies will grimace at the sight or sound of others’ discomfort.

“Social referencing,” waiting to react until they glimpse the faces, voices, or gestures of adults, is something that babies and toddlers often do. In one experiment, babies as young as 4 months of age reacted differently to a peek-a-boo game when they were presented with someone who didn’t show a happy, smiling face during the “boo” part. When they were presented with a sad face, the babies looked away and didn’t want to look back. Called “gaze aversion,” it’s considered a sign of baby distress. An angry face got their attention again, but their expressions changed from pleasure to alertness and vigilance.¹²

Toddlers’ circle of empathy begins to widen sometime between 12 and 18 months of age, when it begins to dawn on them that they are separate from others—others who could feel differently.¹³ Your child, for instance, may stop playing and look up with a concerned expression when another child gets upset in a group setting.

A 13- to 15-month-old may become upset himself when another child throws a tantrum. If a child is crying, he may offer his special security blanket or toy for comfort, or lead his mother by the hand to the child. Sometimes toddlers will show sympathetic distress if an older brother or sister is upset.¹⁴

A 16-month-old may imitate a calming strategy he has just seen his teacher or mother use, such as by gently patting another person on the back.¹⁵ Reactions are dicey at this stage: Toddlers may stand near a crying child and quietly watch him, or they might move away from him, or they might try to hit him to shut him up. At this stage, empathy can’t really be experienced in the same way that you, as an adult, might feel it.

Around 2 years of age, toddlers in groups stop crying contagiously when another child does. At this stage, instead of “catching” the crying, toddlers are more able to detach themselves and sometimes try to respond according to what they observe is happening with the distressed child by soothing gestures or trying to help him out.¹⁶

Around 30 months, toddlers can be seen “trying on” emotional expressions of others to see how they “fit.” As he nears age 3, your toddler may begin to play out scenarios that help him understand others, their actions, and their feelings. He may be able to communicate empathic feelings, such as by saying, “Joshua is sad because Jenny took his cup,” or by patting a distressed child on the back and offering to give him a snack.¹⁷

As your toddler’s emotion coach, you can help nurture his growing sense of empathy by modeling what caring behavior looks like. By being empathic and kind to others and expressing your understanding of what they feeling, you are setting up behavioral patterns that he can learn to emulate over time.

• Vocalize others’ feelings. Help your child learn about others’ feelings by talking about them. By saying, “You made me feel very happy,” or by simply saying, “Ouch!” and pointing to an injured place, you’re helping describe what another child could be feeling. You can engage older toddlers even more by interacting and saying something like, “Look at Jacob’s face. What is he feeling? Does he feel sad because his daddy just said good-bye?” or “When you pushed Sarah, she started to cry. That hurt and made her feel sad and mad.”

• Practice good, old-fashioned manners. Although reinforcing “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome” may seem like somewhat shallow social conventions, those basic words are part of helping your child to understand the connection between himself and others. Having a grasp of social niceties is still usually rewarded, especially at this age.

• Set some basic be-kind-to-others rules. Even though your toddler is too young to remember and follow rules very well, having some basic guidelines in place will be useful for the years ahead. Even if you’re using basic one- or two-word commands to correct behavior, done consistently they establish fundamental rules for behavior toward all others.

• Read and interact. When you’re reading bedtime stories, invite your toddler to imagine things about the characters as a way of expanding his awareness of others. You can help him imagine himself in the story even if he still has limited verbal skills. Examples: “What did the bunny say when the thorn got stuck in his foot?” “Do you think big bear is having fun at his birthday party?” or “Is Olivia’s mama happy or sad?”

• Invite imaginary play. As your toddler ages he will begin to enjoy simple imaginary scenarios. Playing “mommy” or “daddy” and bringing toy animals and dolls to life is another way of learning about others’ worlds. Puppets, too, can be used to express feelings by crying, smiling, laughing, and coaching your child about how other people’s feelings can be different than his own.

Although all parents want to protect their children from stress, sometimes things happen that are not under parents’ control. Mild, short-lived stresses may simply cause a brief change in a child’s heart rate or brief surges in the levels of stress hormones, for example, when your toddler is faced with new situations, or he has to deal with frustration and limits. These stresses are an important part of learning.

Your toddler doesn’t have a lot of words to express his anxiety or stress. He’ll likely show it by being agitated and hyperactive, extra irritable and fussy. His body may be tense and his movements jerkier than usual. He may have sleep problems or regress to more babylike behavior. Or he may turn sluggish and less responsive, and his eyes might glaze over when he feels especially threatened or overwhelmed.

Moderate stress symptoms include his becoming easily upset by small things, regressing and acting more like a baby, wanting to return to the bottle, reverting to baby talk, or forgetting toilet training. Some stressed children become hyperalert and watchful, refusing to eat, acting sick or in pain even though they are apparently well.

Severe stress could be caused by the serious illness or death of a loved one, frightening injury, hospitalization, divorce, physical or emotional abuse or neglect, poverty and malnutrition, or severe parental depression, substance abuse, or violence.

The way a child responds to severe stress depends upon his age and his ability to understand what has happened to him. Toddlers tend to first look to their parents or other adults to observe their reactions. Small children don’t appear to have flashbacks, as adults do, but reminders of their trauma, such as something seen, heard, or smelled, may arouse upset feelings all over again. While some young children have immediate and strong reactions when something extreme happens; others may take longer to react.

Toddlers undergoing severe stress might react in one of two ways: Either they will become overly aroused and alert, or, they may withdraw and appear glazed and distant. Some children show both signs at different times.

During extreme stress, familiar calming and soothing strategies may no longer be very effective. Some toddlers will cling more desperately to their caregivers, and separation anxiety may intensify and be more prolonged. But the single most common reaction of older toddlers to trauma is some form of reexperiencing the event.

When children are exposed to severe, prolonged stress, hormone levels change and cortisol levels rise, which trigger the fight-or-flight response and physically hinder brain cell growth. Long-term effects include impairment of a child’s social functioning, weakened nervous and immune systems, and negative effects on learning, behavior, and mental and physical health. Extreme stress also makes children more sensitive to stress later on, so that they’re more prone to stress-related physical and mental illness.

He may relive the experience through nightmares or fears of monsters, or he may simply replay the experience over and over in his head like a horror movie. His responses will be affected by emotional or developmental problems he’s currently experiencing, his past exposure to other stressful or traumatic events, and any difficult family circumstances.

Having caring parents and other supportive adults in his life who are nurturing and responsive is the best protection a child can have when it comes to recovering from stress and trauma.¹⁸ Here are suggestions for helping the two of you weather the storm:

• Help your child feel more secure. Let your child know that you are present and available to comfort him.

• Increase his sense of control. Trauma of any kind, including medical interventions, makes a person feel as if he has no control. Give your child options to help him feel he has some control, even if it is only two small options: Would he like a drink of water now, or later? Does he want the bedroom door open or closed? Which toys would he like to play with right now?

• Help prepare for changes. Your child is apt to be frightened of sudden and unexpected changes, which can make things feel out of control again. Gently prepare him in very concrete ways for what’s coming in the next hour or two, since neurologically he can’t handle much beyond that.

• Encourage self-expression. Being able to communicate about what he’s feeling and to re-create painful experiences from the past are ways that older toddlers try to cope with bad memories. Encourage your toddler to put into words or to play out what he remembers.

• Lighten the mood. It may be a challenge, but help your child take his mind off of what’s distressing by introducing positive, playful moments. Find laughter wherever it can be found.

• Get your own needs met. Trauma for your child is also trauma for you. Take care of yourself so that you can begin the process of healing for yourself, which will enable you to continue to focus on providing a caring, supportive relationship with your child.

• Get help. You can help to reduce your child’s stress load by finding help and support for your child and your whole family. Use resources from the phone book, community support organizations, child-advocacy groups, and so on.

Putting on the brakes is very hard for motion-driven toddlers, but it is possible to help them learn self-control. The now famous Marshmallow Test conducted by Walter Mischel that began in the 1960s showed that while some preschoolers had trouble holding back, others didn’t.

The children were taken into a lab and observed through a oneway mirror. They were presented a plate with one marshmallow on one side and two marshmallows on the other and a “bring-me-back” bell. The experimenter asked the children, “If you have to choose, would you like to have one marshmallow now or would you like to have two?” Most children would say, “Two!”

The experimenter then explained the “game”: “I am going to leave the room. While I’m gone, if you can stay here and wait for me to come back, then you get two marshmallows. If you don’t want to wait, you can make me come back right away, but then you get one marshmallow, not two.”

The experimenter would be gone up to 15 minutes. Some children knew how to delay gratification, and others didn’t. The children who were the most adept at delaying distracted themselves by paying attention to something else or pretending the marshmallow was a cotton ball or a cloud floating in the sky. If, instead, a child zeroed in on the marshmallow and began to think about how yummy it was, then he was more likely to give in to temptation.

The longer the preschoolers were able to wait and resist the marshmallow temptation, the better their SAT scores were as young adults, and the better they were able to pursue their academic and other goals successfully decades later. They were less likely to use drugs, obtained a higher educational level, and had a higher sense of self-esteem.

Coaching children to refocus their attention enabled them to extend their waiting from only 60 seconds up to 15 minutes or longer. For toddlers, this kind of coaching might include the following: “You can think about fun things while you are waiting, like Mommy swinging you, or sing happy songs to yourself.”

Executive function is the term child development experts use for a child’s growing ability to pull together feelings and think in a way that helps him to exert self-control. It is thought to be connected to the maturation of a specific part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which allows a person to think things through, to set goals, to control impulses, and to entertain multiple things at the same time.

Toddlers’ brains simply don’t have operational executive function yet and won’t for years to come, so waiting, patience, and self-control simply aren’t in the toddler’s book of virtues. But you can help to encourage your toddler’s waiting skills in small increments by using the word wait and using it frequently in your vocabulary and by gesturing using a raised palm (in a “stop” gesture) at the same time to signal what you expect.

Start by saying the word wait while simultaneously giving him the hand signal. Then you can promptly serve him his snack or deliver whatever he demanded, followed by praise: “Thank you for waiting.”

A digital oven timer can help your child learn that there is a reward at the end for being patient. The familiar “ding” will signal that what he wants will be promptly delivered, first after a minute’s delay, and then after 2 and 3 minutes.¹⁹

Like the Marshmallow Test, you can help your toddler exercise his “waiting muscles” by teaching him ways to distract himself with counting games (counting slowly to 5, and then to 10), word games, or a repertoire of songs, such as the “Alphabet Song”, before presenting him with what he wants.

When you’re talking on the phone or in person with someone, and your toddler demands your attention, you can help him learn waiting and patience by teaching him to place his hand on your arm, shoulder, or leg to signal his need for attention.

Researchers over the past 30 years have been trying to discover how some children are able to bounce back from adversity, while others facing similar challenges seem to sustain deeper and more lasting damage.

It’s not that resilient children don’t feel the effects of stressful events. They still get sad, angry, or scared under difficult circumstances, but they are better at soothing themselves, brushing themselves off, and carrying on with productive activities afterward.

At first it was thought that resilience is an inherited trait or directly related to temperament.

More recent studies suggest that resilience hinges on a child’s having support around him—specifically a responsive, protective parent or other adult in his life to support him, such as a loving grandparent or other caregiver.²⁰ Researchers found that the families that produced resilient children were often very involved with relatives and neighbors. Often they had strong religious ties in their communities and drew upon health and social services and other forms of community support. Positive-thinking parents also helped instill in their children a belief that they could overcome adversity, too.

In some cases, a child’s temperament made a difference. Sociable toddlers and those who were alert, independent, and interested in seeking out novel experiences were more likely to show resilience in overcoming adversity, as did those who had the ability to elicit positive attention from their parents and other adults.

First and foremost, though, for a child to be resilient, he needed to feel connected to parents or other caring adults and able to feel secure that these buffering elders were there for him, allowing him to be free to explore and turn to them when he needed support and reassurance.

He also needed simple problem-solving skills, so if he hit roadblocks he knew how to devise ways to get around them. Finally, it helped if a child had regular patterns of living—eating, sleeping, and so on.

But even without all the benefits of intellect, problem-solving, and so on, those children who had supportive parents and lived in environments that fostered their strengths and coping skills were more likely to develop resilience.²¹

Positive strategies help build the foundation for resilience and competence later.

• Be supportive. Having you as an affectionate and responsive parent can strengthen your child in untold ways. This kind of parenting helps to shelter a child from storms. A positive parent conveys that even though her child may act badly, that doesn’t mean that he is bad. Use words such as: Do you need a hug? Your hugs make me smile.

• Respond to cues. Taking time to respond to your child’s communications—including preverbal ones—help him to feel understood and could even help ward off explosive behavior when frustrations mount. Use words such as: Are you feeling scared that I have to leave? I will come back today and every day after lunch. Should we read a short book together before I go?

• Offer decision power. Giving your toddler options whenever possible—even if both options lead to the same outcome—helps him feel strong and capable and in control of something. Most toddlers can only handle two options at a time, so use words such as: Do you want to take your bath now? Or kiss everyone good night and then take your bath?

• Teach logical consequences. Although toddlers may have a limited ability to entertain “this-leads-to-that” thinking, you can start now to reinforce that your child’s actions affect others and have natural outcomes. Use words such as: As soon as you put on your coat, we can play outside. You threw the truck, so now we have to put it away for a while.

• Nudge toward problem solving. Rather than immediately stepping in to help your older toddler with dressing himself or completing other tasks, it’s useful to slow down and take time to work with him on figuring out solutions, so that later on he will gain more confidence in generating his own alternatives. You can help him to think about alternative ways of dealing with upsetting situations, such as preparing him in advance for them. Use words such as: I can see you are working hard to hold all these toys at once, but they keep dropping. What would make carrying them easier? You really tried hard to figure this out, and now you found an answer!

• Provide opportunities to succeed. Start teaching your child early on to believe in his own abilities by providing him with small tasks that he can succeed in and then relating his success to his ability to do them. Use words such as: Look how you washed your hands—you made your hands very clean. You sat very still—you waited and waited.

• Stay neutral about gender. Invite your daughter to climb, play with trucks and blocks, lift heavy objects, and be assertive, and encourage your son to play in the kitchen, to feed baby dolls, pretend to cook, and openly express his feelings and tender emotions, not just his anger. Try reading typical “boy” books on trucks and dinosaurs and gender-neutral stories of firefighters and police officers to your daughter, and ballerina and princess stories to your son. The object is to help your child to become more gender open and flexible, and thus more resilient.

Q: I have a 2-month-old and a 2-year-old. My 2-year-old, who is usually friendly and smart, became defiant when we brought home her baby brother. She won’t listen to me, and if I ask her to do something, she adamantly refuses. She has become very headstrong, and when I try to discipline her, she throws a tantrum. Time-outs just don’t work! She laughs at me, and I find myself getting louder and louder and sounding like a broken record. What can we do to get her to listen to us?

A: First, your daughter may be showing the temperamental characteristics of a “strong-willed child.” (See our tips for handling a strong-willed child in Chapter 1). Second, her behavior suggests that she is worried and sad that you’re replacing her with someone else to love. That’s only heightened by your own exhaustion as you adjust to your new baby and your frustration with her. Try to have empathy for her situation. Think how you might feel if your husband brought home an adorable younger woman to live closely beside you in your house. It simply will take time for your toddler to adjust to this bewildering and worrisome new situation. Hopefully in time she will learn to enjoy her little brother and be proud being the “big girl” in the family. Meanwhile, a lot of reassurance and hugs are called for. This would be a good time for her dad (or another relative) to pitch in with one-on-one time away from home (such as walks in the park or game time at Grandma’s house), and gentle, predictable bath and bedtime rituals.