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5 The Need for Boundaries: You and Your Toddler

~ Times change – does the advice stay the same? ~

Western civilizations are unique in the amount of physical separateness which they impose on infants, inventing innumerable gadgets – prams, cots, babychairs and bouncers … In other times and other parts of the world it would be dangerous to put them down for more than a moment.

It comes as a bit of a shock when that deliciously amenable baby, who smiles whenever he sees you, turns into a raging, bad-tempered toddler, who throws tantrums, refuses to go to bed and turns his nose up at everything you offer him to eat, or refuses to sit still long enough to get any food inside him! Unfortunately, none of the experts agrees about how to handle a toddler; as with all childcare, you need to pick and choose your own solution, depending on the situation and your child.

Times Change – Opinions Change

As you might have noticed from the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, opinions about raising children change from generation to generation. At the turn of the last century, it was very clear how children should behave – they were to be seen and not heard; and it was equally clear what to do if they misbehaved: ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ Victorian children, it would seem, needed taming by force and fear. By the time our parents were born, post-war but pre-flower power, physical violence had eased, but children were still treated roughly – spanking and leaving them to cry were seen as ‘character building’.

By the 1970s and 1980s, ideas had changed completely, and children were brought up in a culture where feelings were beginning to be seen as paramount. Parents were to be child-centred, and smacking was no longer seen as acceptable. Tantrums, food fads, bedtime terrors – all behaviour was examined sympathetically, from the child’s point of view.

The child’s point of view is still important, but most people would also now agree that toddlers need firm boundaries.

This, I think, is one of the hardest things about parenting: the rules change all the time! It is hard to adjust to a life of limit-setting after a year of responding to your baby’s needs, especially if, for instance, you picked him up whenever he cried, or fed him whenever he seemed hungry. But current thinking is that children flourish under a well-regulated, consistent regime, which is firm but fair.¹ After all, adults have to follow rules; if laws changed every day, you would feel confused, too.

However, many parents still worry about disciplining their children because they don’t want to suppress natural exuberance, or resort to smacking – it can be hard to know where the middle line is. What you need to think about is where your boundaries or limits are, and whether these are reasonable and enforceable. Then you can agree them with your partner, and try to stick to them. If you can agree together what is acceptable and what isn’t, then in the long run your child will feel secure within your firm boundaries and will not need to ‘test the limits’ continually with challenging behaviour.

Step One: Feeding

By the time your child is toddling, he will be eating, like you – three meals a day – but as his stomach is still small and as his energy needs are great, you will also be providing healthy snacks between meals. Toddlers still need milk drinks – and it is perfectly normal, if not common in our society, to breastfeed a toddler if you and he are happy to continue.

Food fads may start to emerge at this age; again, this is normal. Consider what nature intended: babies who can’t move will have food chosen for them by a dependable adult, and they are therefore quite happy to eat whatever they are given. However, once they can move independently, they are at risk of eating harmful foods they pick up themselves, and so it makes sense for them to narrow their tastes, restricting their palates to what is already familiar; and this is what seems to happen.

That is why it is worth trying to get your child used to a varied diet before he is toddling.

If your toddler is a faddy eater, try not to let it bother you too much. As he is at the stage where he likes to push at boundaries, if food appears to be a big deal, he may well become choosy just for the sense of control. A few simple rules are worth thinking about, like no pudding until he has finished his vegetables, or no coming back to the table once he has got down – whatever suits you and your family. But don’t force him to eat more than he seems to want – even if he has only eaten a tiny amount. A good principle in life is not to eat past the point of repletion – after all, there are far more tubby people out there than skinny ones!

Step Two: Comfort

Many toddlers are too busy for cuddles; a toddler who starts to cling to his parents is usually one who is tired or hungry. If he comes to you for comfort, he certainly needs it; so let your child be a ‘cry baby’. All children, girls and boys, need to be allowed the natural healing process of tears. It’s a pity that they soon learn not to cry when they pick up what is ‘acceptable’ behaviour at school.

However, crying for toddlers usually means tantrums. Tantrums are normal behaviour at this developmental stage, and children have different reasons for losing their cool. Perhaps, therefore, we have to respond as we see fit on each occasion. Try not to let your toddler get overtired, and look out for signs of trouble brewing in advance, so you can head tantrums off.²

DISTRACTION RATHER THAN CONFRONTATION

If a confrontation develops, before you say no, think about how seriously you mean it. Try not to respond off the cuff. If the answer has to be no, you can still use distraction and negotiation, even while the bottom line is definitely no.

DID YOU KNOW? – you can’t spoil a baby!

Lots of people might suggest that picking your baby up when he cries will spoil him. However, in a study which has been quoted frequently, researchers studied 26 mother-and-baby pairs over a long period of time, and found that babies whose mothers responded quickly and consistently to their cries when they were babies, cried less when they were one year of age, than those whose mothers had ignored their cries.³

These findings are so interesting and seem so significant, that another researcher recently followed this up with a larger experiment. She looked at over 100 babies over four years, and this time worked with families where mothers might not normally be responsive to their babies’ cries. In some, experimenters taught the mothers to respond to the babies’ cries – the rest were ‘control’ families. The researchers found that in families where mothers were more responsive, the babies actually cried less.⁴

Say your toddler is demanding a chocolate biscuit just before dinner. You could distract him by pointing out that his favourite TV show is just starting, and by the time it’s finished, dinner should be ready. If he can hang on till then, he can have the chocolate biscuit for pudding. Toddlers need to learn delayed gratification, but they need help, too!

TANTRUM FACTS

• Children have tantrums only when they are with close family.5

• About half of all two-year-olds have tantrums almost daily.6

Step Three: Sleep

Hopefully, by this stage your baby is mostly sleeping through the night, and having a couple of good naps during the day. Have a look at Step 3 (pages 113–182) if there are issues for your family now. However, often when children start to move, they also start to battle about bedtimes, and the chapter called Can You Train Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night? (page 128) looks at this in more detail.

Supermarkets have become a no-go zone. I hate it. Now I either leave them at home, or get Daddy to do the shopping. I simply can’t get round a supermarket with all of them in tow. As far as tantrums in general go, my initial reaction used to be to lose my temper, though I knew this was unhelpful. Now I tend to go quiet and walk away. I reckon, ‘This is going to resolve itself, and doesn’t need me to add fuel to the fire.’

– Katherine, mother of Hugh, Thomas, Megan and Gareth

~ Times Change ~ Answer – 1981 ~

From Babyhood by Penelope Leach (2nd edn; Penguin)