Читать книгу The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten - Martha Sears - Страница 52

Paying attention to your toddler’s emotional needs and understanding his developmental level are the first steps in disciplining a toddler. Once you realize how and why toddlers act the way they do, it will be easier for you to tolerate behaviour you shouldn’t change and change the behaviour you shouldn’t tolerate.

When your baby learns to walk he officially becomes a toddler. This and other developmental milestones, mental and motor, bring a new set of challenges. Your role as disciplinarian expands from simple nurturing to providing a safe environment in which your toddler can explore and learn. Have realistic expectations for normal toddler behaviour: toddlers are curious, driven, strong-minded. They need these qualities to learn, to persist, to bounce back in spite of life’s little setbacks, to get up and try again. Toddlers also begin to think of themselves as individuals separate from Mummy. This is both exciting and frightening: The toddler is ready to shed the restrictions of being a baby but not ready to leave behind the security.

The lessons an attachment-parented baby learns during his first year help him cope with the ambivalence of toddlerhood. Because he is used to feeling right he is less likely to get himself into situations that make him feel wrong. Because he enters toddlerhood trusting in himself and in his caregivers, there is a balance in what he does and how he acts. There is a purpose to his actions that make him fascinating to watch. The attachment mother reads her child like a book and anticipates what will happen on the next page. She will learn specific ways to channel her toddler’s behaviour.

Offer redirectors. A baby’s mind is filled with hundreds of word associations. One pattern of association we noted in Matthew’s developmental diary was that when I would say, ÉC;Go&#x201D to sixteen–month–old Matthew he would get the baby sling and run to the door.