Parents Of Toddlers Need Patience

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31755, 12 August 1968, Page 3

Parents Of Toddlers Need Patience

Parents of toddlers should have a great deal of patience, understanding, tact, gentleness, calmness, and firmness, a Christchurch psychotherapist said when speaking at the first night of a course arranged by the Christchurch P a r e n t s’ Centre.

Toddlers, who were usually in the second year of life, were in a difficult phase of life, he said. They were experiencing a dramatic change from being wholly dependent and having the world come to them to going out to meet the world. A toddler could be likened to an adolescent in his feeling of having a “tremendous sense of power.” lake toddlers, adolescents were driven by a great many feelings, impulses and emotions which were strange to them. Although all children did not develop at the same rate, the first five years of their life were very important It was during this time that many character disorders which emerged later in life had their beginning. The toddler stage was characterised by self display and by the demanding of attention. Many skills were being acquired and the child was always trying to do something a little beyond his power. Emotional Control A two-year-old had no control over his own emotions and it was up to the parents to help him acquire the control that was necessary, he said. “The curiosity shown by the toddler is very important in the process of learning. Curiosity and persistence with it, are what get us further in

life and what distinguish us from other animals,” he said. “It is also necessary for selfpreservation—we have to find out something is bad to learn to stop using it.” Other characteristics of toddlers, which were also biological necessities, were assertiveness and fear. Assertiveness was valuable because it meant the child was prepared to fight for himself. Associated with this was the selfconfidence which would de velop later in life. Fear was a protective mechanism essential for life, but a toddler needed plenty of support in dealing with it. Like Adolescents Just as an adolescent tended to be adult one minute and a child again the next, a toddler was still dependent and would often go back to being “a baby,” he said. Often, too much was expected of this age group, especially in the child's under standing of adults. Self display was a natural tendency in children and could later become a valuable attribute in a “socially acceptable” way, such as in entertainment or art.

The toddler’s desire for attention was a need. He was not always certain and secure. Some destructive behaviour was also quite natural in any child, he said.