Toddlers Learning Quotes

The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behaviour of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behaviour patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behaviour patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largerly responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.

Imagine a life-form whose brainpower is to ours as ours is to a chimpanzee’s. To such a species, our highest mental achievements would be trivial. Their toddlers, instead of learning their ABCs on Sesame Street, would learn multivariable calculus on Boolean Boulevard. Our most complex theorems, our deepest philosophies, the cherished works of our most creative artists, would be projects their schoolkids bring home for Mom and Dad to display on the refrigerator door.

Four-year-olds are a cross between Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Stephen Hawking: They don’t seem to learn from their mistakes, are highly unpredictable, but show sparks of pure genius.

New mothers are often told that once they've fed, burped, and changed their baby they should leave their baby alone to self-soothe if they cry because all of their needs have been met. One day I hope all new mothers will smile confidently and say, "I gave birth to a baby, not just a digestive system. My baby as a brain that needs to learn trust and a heart that needs love. I will meet all of my baby's needs, emotional, mental, and physical, and I'll respond to every cry because crying is communication, not manipulation.

Ambitious parents who are currently playing the ‘Baby Mozart’ video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard.

If you want to leave the park and your child isn’t ready to go, give her a hug and say, “You’re really upset right now. I know you want to stay, but it’s time to leave.” Then hold your child and let her experience her feelings before you move on to the next activity. If you were instead to pamper your child by letting her stay at the park longer, she doesn’t have the opportunity to learn from experience that she can survive disappointment.

Others point to data showing that even as toddlers, 40 percent of American two-year-olds watch TV for at least three hours a day—hours they are not interacting with people who can help them learn to get along better. The more TV they watch, the more unruly they are by school age.

You're going to make mistakes as a parent. It's literally inevitable. You're human, and mistakes are just part of being human. It's how you handle your mistakes that matters most. Acknowledge them. Apologize for them. Make them as right as possible. Learn something from them. And then let them go. It's okay. I promise. After all, how else will our little humans learn that it's okay to be human.

My mother’s English has remained rudimentary during her forty-plus years living in the United States. When she speaks Korean, my mother speaks her mind. She is sharp, witty, and judgmental, if rather self-preening. But her English is a crush of piano keys that used to make me cringe whenever she spoke to a white person. As my mother spoke, I watched the white person, oftentimes a woman, put on a fright mask of strained tolerance: wide eyes frozen in trapped patience, smile widened in condescension. As she began responding to my mother in a voice reserved for toddlers, I stepped in. From a young age, I learned to speak for my mother as authoritatively as I could. Not only did I want to dispel the derision I saw behind that woman’s eyes, I wanted to shame her with my sobering fluency for thinking what she was thinking. I have been partly drawn to writing, I realize, to judge those who have unfairly judged my family; to prove that I’ve been watching this whole time.

If you’ve told a child a thousand times, and the child still has not learned, then it is not the child who is the slow learner.” —Walter B. Barbe

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers—a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars—and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.

Origins Of Cptsd How do traumatically abused and/or abandoned children develop Cptsd? While the origin of Cptsd is most often associated with extended periods of physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood, my observations convince me that ongoing verbal and emotional abuse also causes it. Many dysfunctional parents react contemptuously to a baby or toddler’s plaintive call for connection and attachment. Contempt is extremely traumatizing to a child, and at best, extremely noxious to an adult. Contempt is a toxic cocktail of verbal and emotional abuse, a deadly amalgam of denigration, rage and disgust. Rage creates fear, and disgust creates shame in the child in a way that soon teaches her to refrain from crying out, from ever asking for attention. Before long, the child gives up on seeking any kind of help or connection at all. The child’s bid for bonding and acceptance is thwarted, and she is left to suffer in the frightened despair of abandonment. Particularly abusive parents deepen the abandonment trauma by linking corporal punishment with contempt. Slaveholders and prison guards typically use contempt and scorn to destroy their victims’ self-esteem. Slaves, prisoners, and children, who are made to feel worthless and powerless devolve into learned helplessness and can be controlled with far less energy and attention. Cult leaders also use contempt to shrink their followers into absolute submission after luring them in with brief phases of fake unconditional love.

Becoming a parent doesn't make you less of a woman. You matter. Your happiness matters. Your health matters. Your dreams matter. Today do at least one thing for you. Take a walk in the rain. Meet a friend for coffee. Write in your journal. Read a book. Plan a trip. Hug a tree. Help a stranger. Create something. Grow something. Sing something. Learn something. Whatever it is that makes you smile, do a little of it each day. Your children are watching. Let them see you happy.

Many believe that parenting is about controlling children's behavior and training them to act like adults. I believe that parenting is about controlling my own behavior and acting like an adult myself. Children learn what they live and live what they learn.

Toddlers have an excuse when it comes to their shitty behavior: They’re learning how to be people. If you’re an asshole of a parent, it’s all on you.

Toddlers don't need tests or grades to learn to walk or talk.

toddlers learn more between 12 months and three years old than during any other stage throughout their whole life?

Hitting children teaches them that it’s okay for big people to hit little people and that it’s okay to vent anger through violence. Is that really what you want your child to learn? And what sense does it make to spank kids to punish them for hitting? We don’t teach children not to spit by spitting at them, do we?

Who knew that parenting would become an almost spiritual journey? And what a journey it is. Sometimes I wish I had known all of this before I became a parent. Yet, we only know what we know. So I think of how I've grown up alongside my children - that they see me trying and geting it wrong and trying again ad getting a bit better, constantly learning and growing.

How long would you want to stay with someone who insisted on treating you as if you were the same person you were the day you two met? This is true not just in romantic relationships but in all relationships. Even toddlers object to being treated like the infants they were just months earlier. Offer a two-year-old a helping hand with something they’ve already learned how to do and you’ll likely get an exasperated, “I do it!” Listening is how we stay connected to one another as the pages turn in our lives.

I came to the party with the sole purpose of getting completely shit-faced, to be perfectly honest. That was it, that was The Plan from the very beginning. I wanted more than anything that ever regrettable, forgetting-everything-you-learned-as-a-toddler kind of wasted that only either the completely stupid venture into or the complete novice (given how naive I was I think I fall more into the latter category). It was a very simple plan, but I like to think the simplest ones tend to be the most effective. The Plan sure as hell didn't involve everything else that happened that night, as all of that occurred quite naturally on its own.

When a child shows a particular interest in one area—for example, movement, language, math, reading—it is known as a sensitive period. This describes a moment when the child is particularly attuned to learning a certain skill or concept and it happens with ease and without effort.

What seems to be a lack of flexibility (“I can’t eat breakfast without my favorite spoon!”) is actually an expression of their strong sense of order. What looks like a battle of wills is actually your toddler learning that things don’t always go their way. What looks like repeating the same annoying game over and over is actually the child trying to gain mastery. What appears to be an explosive tantrum is actually the toddler saying, “I love you so much, I feel safe to release everything that I’ve been holding on to all day.” What seems to be intentionally going slowly to wind us up is actually them exploring everything in their path.

More than nine million people a year come to the Smokies, many of them to picnic. So bears have learned to associate people with food. Indeed, to them people are overweight creatures in baseball caps who spread lots and lots of food out on picnic tables and then shriek a little and waddle off to get their video cameras when old Mr. Bear comes along and climbs onto the table and starts devouring their potato salad and chocolate cake. Since the bear doesn’t mind being filmed and indeed seems indifferent to his audience, pretty generally some fool will come up to it and try to stroke it or feed it a cupcake or something. There is one recorded instance of a woman smearing honey on her toddler’s fingers so that the bear would lick it off for the video camera. Failing to understand this, the bear ate the baby’s hand.

In a fool, education can be like a full box of matches in the hand of a toddler that is home-alone.

It’s Ms. Hilda’s magic drawer! That’s where Ms. Hilda finds everything we need. Crayons, papers, glitters, candies, everything!

As we develop as infants and toddlers, we learn many of our social, moral and ethical cues from our parents.

Common observation confirms that a mobile, exploring toddler learns faster and more efficiently than the child whose feet never leave the couch and whose eyes never leave the T.V. screen.

Sharing is equated with being a decent person. That may fit for adults but it is far from fitting for young children. Misunderstanding what sharing is and how your child learns about it over time gets in the way of healthy social development. This is especially true if share means giving up what they have and need. People who feel deprived or in need of something do not feel generous, especially when they are two, three, four, or five.

Around the age of two, children realize that they’re separate from their mothers. In order to try out their muscles as individuals, they begin to disagree with those around them by saying no (hence the “terrible twos”). Toddlers who successfully detach from their mothers are able to say, in effect, “No, I will not eat what you want, put my boots on, or do what you say. I am a separate person.” This stage helps children learn the concept of “mine,” but it’s also part of learning to assert themselves.

It’s a lonely business, and then sometimes strangely claustrophobic, but this is it. This is what I wanted and what Liz was pulled away from, against her every fiber. This abstract performance art called Family Life is our one run at the ultimate improv. Our chance to be great for someone, to give another person enough of what they need to be happy. Ours to overlook or lose track of or bemoan, ours to recommit to, to apologize for, to try again for. Ours to watch disappear into their next self—toddler to tyke, tween to teen—ours to drop off somewhere and miss forever. It’s happening right now, whether we attend to it or not.

Young children also play to learn about the world. Why aren't we amused when our toddler drops her food off the high chair for the hundredth time? Because we know about gravity (and we have to clean it up). She, however, is extremely amused, because everything about the universe is new and interesting and open to playful discovery.

Eugene Peterson reminds us that “because we learned language so early in our lives we have no memory of the process” and would therefore imagine that it was we who took the initiative to learn how to speak. However, that is not the case. “Language is spoken into us; we learn language only as we are spoken to. We are plunged at birth into a sea of language. . . . Then slowly syllable by syllable we acquire the capacity to answer: mama, papa, bottle, blanket, yes, no. Not one of these words was a first word. . . . All speech is answering speech. We were all spoken to before we spoke.”109 In the years since Peterson wrote, studies have shown that children’s ability to understand and communicate is profoundly affected by the number of words and the breadth of vocabulary to which they are exposed as infants and toddlers. We speak only to the degree we are spoken to. It is therefore essential to the practice of prayer to recognize what Peterson calls the “overwhelming previousness of God’s speech to our prayers.”110 This theological principle has practical consequences. It means that our prayers should arise out of immersion in the Scripture. We should “plunge ourselves into the sea” of God’s language, the Bible. We should listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds. It may be one of shame or of joy or of confusion or of appeal—but that response to God’s speech is then truly prayer and should be given to God. If the goal of prayer is a real, personal connection with God, then it is only by immersion in the language of the Bible that we will learn to pray, perhaps just as slowly as a child learns to speak.

..children only begin to understand differences in desires when they are about eighteen months old...Toddlers are systematically testing the dimensions on which their desires and the desires of others may be in conflict... The terrible twos reflects a genuine clash between children's need to understand other people and their need to live happily with them.

I’ve learned to make really quick decisions that shape the future in a positive way. One talent that I bring to the table is my ability to insult the clothing. For example, “the colors of those pants look like hospital scrubs” or “the shape of that dress is for a toddler.” This ability has served me well and has probably saved the customer from some questionable choices.

We learned that, because language was a universal human instinct, no human was bad at grammar—not even toddlers or black people. That’s what the book said: you might think that toddlers and black people had no grammar, but if you analyzed their utterances, they were actually following grammatical rules so sophisticated that they couldn’t be programmed into any computer. We

This can be an important part of learning from failure. If you keep those feelings inside, you may not examine everything that happened and learn from it. Often, talking through challenges with someone else can shed new light on the situation, which is necessary for you to learn and move forward successfully. SEE THE OPPORTUNITY IN FAILURE Toddlers approach potential failure with curiosity.

With a foundation of the five basic ingredients, we can apply seven principles to help them become curious human beings. 1. Follow the child—let them lead. 2. Encourage hands-on learning—let them explore. 3. Include the child in daily life—let them be included. 4. Go slow—let them set their own pace. 5. Help me to help myself—let them be independent and responsible. 6. Encourage creativity—let them wonder. 7. Observe—let them show us.

If a struggle emerges about eating, a toddler will get so involved in the struggle and so upset that it overwhelms her need to eat. This observation is just as true of struggles about potty training, what to wear, school work, and so on. Throughout your child’s growing-up years, it is important to matter-of-factly set the limits and avoid the emotional fireworks and struggles. Learning to do this with feeding will help you in other areas as well.

A Photographer's Poem To take a photograph is to learn new steps Like a toddler's first walk from start to end Visualize a dream, a paradigm, a theme It could be about anywhere, anyone, any moment or anything Let that sink in until your eyes see clearly What image you cease to create to preserve in dearly With a camera you take the picture in mind A photographer's mistake is to leave it behind Take it wherever a journey is to take place There will always be something that comes across your ways

Motherhood is hard, and no mom in the history of the entire world has been a perfect mama—no one. With that in mind, even in your worst mama moments, cut yourself some slack. God has used some of the hardest times I’ve had as a mom—times when I wasn’t sure if I would survive the day, much less eighteen years—to show me how to depend on Him. And in order for God to use these trials to help me learn and grow, I have to let go of them and give them to God. Only He can make our paths—and our children’s paths—straight.

A quotation used in 99.9999 percent of all books about space settlement comes from rocketry founding father Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who wrote in a 1911 article, “The earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot forever live in the cradle.” Perhaps. But we should remember that what emerges from a cradle is not a full-grown adult, but a toddler—lacking in knowledge, very excited, and prone to self-destruction. If we do plan to leave this place, better to do so as an adult. Let’s spend the awkward years learning and then strike out for new vistas.

Lizzie had once briefly toyed with the idea of studying developmental psychology—she’d never much liked children, but she did love the idea of them as natural-born physicists, the theory that babies began life as miniature Aristotelians and only by trial and error discovered Galilean inertia and Newtonian motion, every toddler a live-action Wile E. Coyote, running off the cliff and learning gravity on the way down. It occurred to her now to imagine a moral philosophy taking shape in the same way, baby Hobbeses and little Lockes bumping into sin and consequence.

The Truth About Boys and Girls You may be surprised to learn that baby boys actually appear to be more fragile at birth than do baby girls. Yup, studies show that the rough, tough little guys made of “snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails” appear to be more easily stressed and more susceptible to health problems. They are often “fussier” than girls; they cry more easily and seem to have a harder time learning to calm themselves down (what is sometimes called “self-soothing”). Baby boys may be more sensitive to changes in routine, and to parental anger or depression.

I’ve found my productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio to be one to seven. So, for every eight-hour day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done. The other seven hours are preparing for writing: pacing around the house, collapsing cardboard boxes for recycling, reading the DVD extras pamphlet from the BBC Pride & Prejudice, getting snacks lined up for writing, and YouTubing toddlers who learned the “Single Ladies” dance. I know. Isn’t that horrible? So, basically, writing this piece took me the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Enjoy it accordingly.

It’s a lonely business, and then sometimes strangely claustrophobic, but this is it. This is what I wanted and what Liz was pulled away from, against her every fiber. This abstract performance art called Family Life is our one run at the ultimate improv. Our chance to be great for someone, to give another person enough of what they need to be happy. Ours to overlook or lose track of or bemoan, ours to recommit to, to apologize for, to try again for. Ours to watch disappear into their next self—toddler to tyke, tween to teen—ours to drop off somewhere and miss forever. It’s happening right now, whether we attend to it or not. Like after preparing a nutritious meal that no one really liked and a lot of blame-gaming over who forgot to take out the compost, your peevish, greasy “young adult” tramps off to take the shower she should have taken two days ago and the evening is shot to shit and not one minute of it looked like the thing you prayed for so long ago, but then you hear something. You head up the stairs, hover outside the bathroom door. “All the single ladies, all the single ladies…” — The kid is singing in the shower. Your profoundly ordinary kid is singing in the shower and you get to be here to hear it.

That hour of the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan. Divinity and humanity then are equally willing that he should starve in the street for all that either will do for him. Now cruel father and mother have both let go his hand, and the little soul-toddler, now you shall hear his shriek and his wail, and often his fall.

The national curriculum for the Swedish preschool is twenty pages long and goes on at length about things like fostering respect for one another, human rights, and democratic values, as well as a lifelong desire to learn. The document's word choices are a pretty good clue to what Swedish society wants and expects from toddlers and preschoolers. The curriculum features the word "play" thirteen times, "language" twelve times, "nature" six times, and "math" five times. But there is not a single mention of "literacy" or "writing." Instead, two of the most frequently used words are "learning" (with forty-eight appearances) and "development" (forty-seven). The other Scandinavian countries have similar early childhood education traditions. In Finland, formal teaching of reading doesn't start until the child begins first grade, at age seven, and in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world, with Norway coming in second, and Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden rounding out the top five, according to a 2016 study by Central Connecticut State University. John Miller, who conducted the study, noted that the five Nordic countries scored so well because "their monolithic culture values reading.

The things money can’t buy, goes the famous quote, you don’t want anyway. Which is bullshit, because in truth there is nothing money can’t buy. Not really. Love, happiness, peace of mind. It’s all available for a price. The fact is, there’s enough money on earth to make everyone whole, if we could just learn to do what any toddler knows—share. But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire’s account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict.

Patriotism comes from the same Latin word as father. Blind patriotism is collective transference. In it the state becomes a parent and we citizens submit our loyalty to ensure its protection. We may have been encouraged to make that bargain from our public school education, our family home, religion, or culture in general. We associate safety with obedience to authority, for example, going along with government policies. We then make duty, as it is defined by the nation, our unquestioned course. Our motivation is usually not love of country but fear of being without a country that will defend us and our property. Connection is all-important to us; excommunication is the equivalent of death, the finality we can’t dispute. Healthy adult loyalty is a virtue that does not become blind obedience for fear of losing connection, nor total devotion so that we lose our boundaries. Our civil obedience can be so firm that it may take precedence over our concern for those we love, even our children. Here is an example: A young mother is told by the doctor that her toddler is allergic to peanuts and peanut oil. She lets the school know of her son’s allergy when he goes to kindergarten. Throughout his childhood, she is vigilant and makes sure he is safe from peanuts in any form. Eighteen years later, there is a war and he is drafted. The same mother, who was so scrupulously careful about her child’s safety, now waves goodbye to him with a tear but without protest. Mother’s own training in public school and throughout her life has made her believe that her son’s life is expendable whether or not the war in question is just. “Patriotism” is so deeply ingrained in her that she does not even imagine an alternative, even when her son’s life is at stake. It is of course also true that, biologically, parents are ready to let children go just as the state is ready to draft them. What a cunning synchronic-ity. In addition, old men who decide on war take advantage of the timing too. The warrior archetype is lively in eighteen-year-olds, who are willing to fight. Those in their mid-thirties, whose archetype is being a householder and making a mark in their chosen field, will not show an interest in battlefields of blood. The chiefs count on the fact that young braves will take the warrior myth literally rather than as a metaphor for interior battles. They will be willing to put their lives on the line to live out the collective myth of societies that have not found the path of nonviolence. Our collective nature thus seems geared to making war a workable enterprise. In some people, peacemaking is the archetype most in evidence. Nature seems to have made that population smaller, unfortunately. Our culture has trained us to endure and tolerate, not to protest and rebel. Every cell of our bodies learned that lesson. It may not be virtue; it may be fear. We may believe that showing anger is dangerous, because it opposes the authority we are obliged to appease and placate if we are to survive. This explains why we so admire someone who dares to say no and to stand up or even to die for what he believes. That person did not fall prey to the collective seduction. Watching Jeopardy on television, I notice that the audience applauds with special force when a contestant risks everything on a double-jeopardy question. The healthy part of us ardently admires daring. In our positive shadow, our admiration reflects our own disavowed or hidden potential. We, too, have it in us to dare. We can stand up for our truth, putting every comfort on the line, if only we can calm our long-scared ego and open to the part of us that wants to live free. Joseph Campbell says encouragingly, “The part of us that wants to become is fearless.” Religion and Transference Transference is not simply horizontal, from person to person, but vertical from person to a higher power, usually personified as God. When

I ASSURE you that I am the book of fate. Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! Answers leap up like a frightened flock, blackening the sky of my inescapable memories. Not one answer, not one suffices. What prisms flash when I enter the terrible field of my past. I am a chip of shattered flint enclosed in a box. The box gyrates and quakes. I am tossed about in a storm of mysteries. And when the box opens, I return to this presence like a stranger in a primitive land. Slowly (slowly, I say) I relearn my name. But that is not to know myself! This person of my name, this Leto who is the second of that calling, finds other voices in his mind, other names and other places. Oh, I promise you (as I have been promised) that I answer to but a single name. If you say, "Leto," I respond. Sufferance makes this true, sufferance and one thing more: I hold the threads! All of them are mine. Let me but imagine a topic say... men who have died by the sword-and I have them in all of their gore, every image intact, every moan, every grimace. Joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles and the sweet cooings of new generations. The first walkings of the toddlers and the first victories of youths brought forth for me to share. They tumble one upon another until I can see little else but sameness and repetition. "Keep it all intact," I warn myself. Who can deny the value of such experiences, the worth of learning through which I view each new instant? Ahhh, but it's the past. Don't you understand? It's only the past!

This was what Regan did to Aldo: irreparable damage to his former self. Regan was Regan, but she was also the loss of a former life to which he could never return. Of course he didn’t wish to, but that wasn’t the point. It could never exist a second time. He considered what she’d said—if it all fails, Aldo, go back and erase us, make it like we never happened—and he understood that while it would be a cruelty, it would be a kindness in equal measures. Because the old him was dead, and what existed of him now could die, too, a painful death, if he were capable of doing what she asked. What he was now, some toddler of a man learning how to breathe again, would be gone. His life before her, his life without her, the Parthenon, they would all be ancient rubble. Only stories would remain to give them value.

5236 rue St. Urbain The baby girl was a quick learner, having synthesized a full range of traits of both of her parents, the charming and the devious. Of all the toddlers in the neighbourhood, she was the first to learn to read and also the first to tear out the pages. Within months she mastered the grilling of the steaks and soon thereafter presented reasons to not grill the steaks. She was the first to promote a new visceral style of physical comedy as a means of reinvigorate the social potential of satire, and the first to declare the movement over. She appreciated the qualities of movement and speed, but also understood the necessity of slowness and leisure. She quickly learned the importance of ladders. She invented games with numerous chess-boards, matches and glasses of unfinished wine. Her parents, being both responsible and duplicitous people, came up with a plan to protect themselves, their apartment and belongings, while also providing an environment to encourage the open development of their daughter's obvious talents. They scheduled time off work, put on their pajamas and let the routines of the apartment go. They put their most cherished books right at her eye-level and gave her a chrome lighter. They blended the contents of the fridge and poured it into bowls they left on the floor. They took to napping in the living room, waking only to wipe their noses on the picture books and look blankly at the costumed characters on the TV shows. They made a fuss for their daughter's attention and cried when she wandered off; they bit or punched each other when she out of the room, and accused the other when she came in, looking frustrated. They made a mess of their pants when she drank too much, and let her figure out the fire extinguisher when their cigarettes set the blankets smoldering. They made her laugh with cute songs and then put clothes pins on the cat's tail. Eventually things found their rhythm. More than once the three of them found their faces waxened with tears, unable to decide if they had been crying, laughing, or if it had all been a reflex, like drooling. They took turns in the bath. Parents and children--it is odd when you trigger instinctive behaviour in either of them--like survival, like nurture. It's alright to test their capabilities, but they can hurt themselves if they go too far. It can be helpful to imagine them all gorging on their favourite food until their bellies ache. Fall came and the family went to school together.

Parents of spirited children who are learning to manage their intensity well are talking about intensity and naming the emotions. They soothe the wailing baby by telling him that they understand it’s frustrating to wait for the bottle to warm. They tell the toddler that they understand she is angry. It’s hard for her to stop playing outside and come into the house. Soon, the children will be able to use these words themselves. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. And according to John Gottman, from the Gottman Institute, the research demonstrates that children who receive these types of messages are “emotion coached” and are more effective at soothing themselves and focusing attention. As a result, they do better in school and with peers, experience fewer behavior problems, and demonstrate more positive emotions.

Sadie had learned the rules of Revelare magic while growing up at her grandmother’s feet, her grubby little toddler hands searching for earthworms as Gigi explained why mustard seed helped people talk about their feelings and how star anise could bond two people together. The sweet tang of tangerine rinds scented the air as her little fingernails were perpetually stained orange. And always, Gigi warned her how their creations would speak to them. If you were in love, things tended to turn out too sweet. If dinner was bland, you needed some adventure. And if you burned a dessert—well, something wicked this way comes. Sadie listened to those lessons among the bitter rutabagas and wild, climbing sweet peas, drinking in every word, and letting them take root in her heart. She grew up comfortable with the knowledge that she was strange, weaving the magic around her like ribbons on a maypole.

Resilience,” she said. “Living with an addict requires resilience. And the ability to compartmentalise.” “To switch off?” “Yes. Exactly that. To detach from everything going on around you and put yourself someplace else.” “Literally or figuratively?” She smiled. “When she was small, a toddler I expect, she couldn’t walk away. She had to stay, to endure. The only way a child can cope is to switch off, detach from it all because they can’t stop you doing the crazy shit you’re doing, or tell you to pack it in…” her expression darkened and she took on a faraway look, “and they sure as hell can’t make a run for it.” She inhaled, smiling weakly. “But they can endure. Have you ever heard a parent say their baby is so great because it stopped crying and never causes a fuss?” “Once or twice, yes.” “That’s because they’ve already learned not to bother.” Her tone was soft, and she spoke slowly. “No one is coming, so you might as well just shut up.” “Are you speaking about Katy’s experience… or yours?

Evangeline had lain here, in this bed. Paced this floor. She'd been younger than Ruby when she came to this house, trying to find her way in the world, and she left it pregnant and scared, with no one to help her. Ruby thought of all the women who came into Warwick Hospital and St. Mary's Dispensary, seeking treatment. Heavy with child, or writhing in pain from venereal diseases, or carrying newborns and toddlers. All the burdens of being poor and female, as Dr. Garrett put it. No one to catch you if you fell. Looking down at the worn pine floor, Ruby was struck by a realization; she'd been in this room before, when she was barely more than a whispered thought. "Will you excuse me?" Mr. Whitstone said. "I'll just be a minute." She nodded. It was late in the afternoon. She wanted to get back to her lodgings before dark. Though she wasn't looking forward to the long voyage back to Tasmania, she was eager to share what she'd learned during her year abroad. This moment in Evangeline's room, she knew, had nothing to do with the rest of her life and everything to do with it. She would leave this house changed, but no one would ever know she'd been here.

University of Michigan psychologist Felix Warneken walks across the room, carrying a tall stack of magazines, toward the doors of a closed wooden cabinet. He bumps into the front of the cabinet, exclaims a startled “Oh!,” and backs away. Staring for a moment at the cabinet, he makes a thoughtful “Hmm,” before shuffling forward and bumping the magazines against the cabinet doors again. Again he backs away, defeated, and says, pitiably, “Hmmm . . .” It’s as if he can’t figure out where he’s gone wrong. From the corner of the room, a toddler comes to the rescue. The child walks somewhat unsteadily toward the cabinet, heaves open the doors one by one, then looks up at Warneken with a searching expression, before backing away. Warneken, making a grateful sound, puts his pile of magazines on the shelf.1 Warneken, along with his collaborator Michael Tomasello of Duke, was the first to systematically show, in 2006, that human infants as young as eighteen months old will reliably identify a fellow human facing a problem, will identify the human’s goal and the obstacle in the way, and will spontaneously help if they can—even if their help is not requested, even if the adult doesn’t so much as make eye contact with them, and even when they expect (and receive) no reward for doing so.2

DAYS ONE THROUGH SIX, ETC. You keep on asking me that – “Which day was the hardest?” Blockheads! They were all hard – And of course, since I’m omnipotent, they were all easy. It was Chaos, to begin with. Can you imagine Primeval Chaos? Of course you can’t. How long had it been swirling around out there? Forever. How long had I been there? Longer than that. It was a mess, that’s what it was. Chaos is Rocky. Fuzzy. Slippery. Prickly. As scraggly and obstreperous as the endless behind of an infinite jackass. Shove on it anywhere, it gives, then slips in behind you, like smog, like lava, like slag. I’m telling you, chaos is – chaotic. You see what I was up against. Who could make a world out of that muck? I could, that’s who – land from water, light from dark, and so on. It might seem like a piece of cake now that it’s done, but back then, without a blueprint, without a set of instructions, without a committee, could you have created a firmament? Of course there were bugs in the process, grit in the gears, blips, bloopers – bringing forth grass and trees on Day Three and not making sunlight until Day Four, that, I must say, wasn’t my best move. And making the animals and vegetables before there was any rain whatsoever – well, anyone can have a bad day. Even Adam, as it turned out, wasn’t such a great idea – those shifty eyes, the alibis, blaming things on his wife – I mean, it set a bad example. How could he expect that little toddler, Cain, to learn correct family values with a role model like him? And then there was the nasty squabble Over the beasts and birds. OK, I admit I told Adam to name them, but – Platypus? Aardvark? Hippopotamus? Let me make one thing perfectly clear – he didn’t get that gibberish from Me. No, I don’t need a planet to fall on Me, I know something about subtext. He did it to irritate Me, just plain spite – and did I need the aggravation? Well, as you know, things went from bad to worse, from begat to begat, father to son, the evil fruit of all that early bile. So next there was narcissism, then bigotry, then jealousy, rage, vengeance! And finally I realized, the spawn of Adam had become exactly like – Me. No Deity with any self-respect would tolerate that kind of competition, so what could I do? I killed them all, that’s what! Just as the Good Book says, I drowned man, woman, and child, like so many cats. Oh, I saved a few for restocking, Noah and his crew, the best of the lot, I thought. But now you’re back to your old tricks again, just about due for another good ducking, or maybe a giant barbecue. And I’m warning you, if I have to do it again, there won’t be any survivors, not even a cockroach! Then, for the first time since it was Primeval Chaos, the world will be perfect – nobody in it but Me.

Ever since the 1960s, upon the urging of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and the all-knowing Dr. Spock,* mothers have been encouraged to read to their children at a very early age. For toddlers and preschoolers who relish this early diet of literacy, libraries become a second home, story hour is never long enough, and parents can’t finish a book without hearing a little voice beg, “Again… again.” For most literary geek girls, it’s at this age that they discover their passion for reading. Whether it’s Harold and the Purple Crayon or Strega Nona, books provide the budding literary she-geek with a glimpse into an all-new world of magic and make-believe—and once she visits, she immediately wants to apply for full-time citizenship. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —author Joan Didion, in The White Album While some children spend their summers sweating on community sports teams or learning Indigo Girls songs at sleep-away camp, our beloved bookworms are more interested in joining their local library’s summer reading program, completing twenty-five books during vacation, and earning a certificate of recognition signed by their city’s mayor. (Plus, that Sony Bloggie Touch the library is giving away to the person who logs the most hours reading isn’t the worst incentive, either. It’ll come in handy for that book review YouTube channel she’s been thinking about starting!) When school starts back up again, her friends will inevitably show off their tan lines and pony bead friendship bracelets, and our geek girl will politely oblige by oohing and aahing accordingly. But secretly she’s bursting with pride over her summer’s battle scars—the numerous paper cuts she got while feverishly turning the pages of all seven Harry Potter books.

Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers… Parents and other passengers read on Kindles… Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing… As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago… My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential “deep reading” processes may be under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading… Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19thand 20th centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience,” however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts… Karin Littau and Andrew Piper have noted another dimension: physicality. Piper, Littau and Anne Mangen’s group emphasize that the sense of touch in print reading adds an important redundancy to information – a kind of “geometry” to words, and a spatial “thereness” for text. As Piper notes, human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination – what he calls the “technology of recurrence”. The importance of recurrence for both young and older readers involves the ability to go back, to check and evaluate one’s understanding of a text. The question, then, is what happens to comprehension when our youth skim on a screen whose lack of spatial thereness discourages “looking back.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants," wrote Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. In the original and primary sense of lacks or needs, wants tend to structure our vision of government's responsibilities. The quest for security - whether economic, physical, psychological, or military - brings a sense of urgency to politics and is one of the enduring sources of passion in policy controversies. Need is probably the most fundamental political claim. Even toddlers know that need carries more weight than desire or deservingness. They learn early to counter a rejected request by pleading, "I need it." To claim need is to claim that one should be given the resources or help because they are essential. Of course, this raises the question "essential for what?" In conflicts over security, the central issues are what kind of security government should attempt to provide; what kinds of needs it should attempt to meet; and how the burdens of making security a collective responsibility should be distributed. Just as most people are all for equity and efficiency in the abstract, most people believe that society should help individuals and families when they are in dire need. But beneath this consensus is a turbulent and intense conflict over how to distinguish need from mere desire, and how to preserve a work - or - merit based system of economic distribution in the face of distribution according to need. Defining need for purposes of public programs become much an exercise like defining equity and efficiency. People try to portray their needs as being objective, and policymakers seek to portray their program criteria as objective, in order to put programs beyond political dispute. As with equity and efficiency, there are certain recurring strategies of argument that can be used to expand or contract a needs claim. In defense policy, relative need is far more important than absolute. Our sense of national security (and hence our need for weapons) depends entirely on comparison with the countries we perceive as enemies. And here Keynes is probably right: The need for weapons can only be satisfied by feeling superior to "them." Thus, it doesn't matter how many people our warheads can kill or how many cities they can destroy. What matters is what retaliatory capacity we have left after an attack by the other side, or whether our capacity to sustain an offense is greater than their capacity to destroy it. The paradox of nuclear weapons is that the more security we gain in terms of absolute capability (i.e., kill potential), the more insecure we make ourselves with respect to the consequences of nuclear explosions. We gain superiority only by producing weapons we ourselves are terrified to use.

My dear Marwan, in the long summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfathers’ farmhouse outside of Hom. We woke in the mornings to the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, to the bleating of your grandmother's goat, the clanking of her cooking pots, the air cool and the sun a pale rim of persimmon to the east. We took you there when you were a toddler. I have a sharply etched memory of your mother from that trip. I wish you hadn’t been so young. You wouldn't have forgotten the farmhouse, the soot of its stone walls, the creek where your uncles and I built a thousand boyhood dams. I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan. In its bustling Old City, a mosque for us Muslims, a church for our Christian neighbours, and a grand souk for us all to haggle over gold pendants and fresh produce and bridal dresses. I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square. But that life, that time, seems like a dream now, even to me, like some long-dissolved rumour. First came the protests. Then the siege. The skies spitting bombs. Starvation. Burials. These are the things you know You know a bomb crater can be made into a swimming hole. You have learned dark blood is better news than bright. You have learned that mothers and sisters and classmates can be found in narrow gaps between concrete, bricks and exposed beams, little patches of sunlit skin shining in the dark. Your mother is here tonight, Marwan, with us, on this cold and moonlit beach, among the crying babies and the women worrying in tongues we don’t speak. Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and Eritreans and Syrians. All of us impatient for sunrise, all of us in dread of it. All of us in search of home. I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother's voice, over the tide, and she whispers in my ear, ‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.' In the glow of this three-quarter moon, my boy, your eyelashes like calligraphy, closed in guileless sleep. I said to you, ‘Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen.' These are only words. A father's tricks. It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how powerless I am to protect you from it. Pray God steers the vessel true, when the shores slip out of eyeshot and we are in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting, easily swallowed. Because you, you are precious cargo, Marwan, the most precious there ever was. I pray the sea knows this. Inshallah. How I pray the sea knows this.

While parents like Cyndi Paul find it heartbreaking to start imposing discipline, children react well when reprimands are delivered briefly, calmly, and consistently, according to Susan O’Leary, a psychologist who has spent long hours observing toddlers and parents. When parents are inconsistent, when they let an infraction slide, they sometimes try to compensate with an extra-strict punishment for the next one. This requires less self-control on the parents’ part: They can be nice when they feel like it, and then punish severely if they’re feeling angry or the misbehavior is egregious. But imagine how this looks from the child’s point of view. Some days you make a smart remark and the grown-ups all laugh. Other days a similar remark brings a smack or the loss of treasured privileges. Seemingly tiny or even random differences in your own behavior or in the situation seem to spell the difference between no punishment at all and a highly upsetting one. Besides resenting the unfairness, you learn that the most important thing is not how you behave but whether or not you get caught, and whether your parents are in the mood to punish. You might learn, for instance, that table manners can be dispensed with at restaurants, because the grown-ups are too embarrassed to discipline you in public. “Parents find it hard to administer discipline in public because they feel judged,” Carroll says. “They’re afraid people will think they’re a bad mother. But you have to get that out of your head. I’ve had people stare at me when I take a child out of a restaurant for being rude, but you can’t worry about that. You have to do what’s right for the child, and it really is all about being consistent. They have to grow up knowing what’s appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

From an early age I helped my mother clean them. We used a special cloth provided by the government, which could not be used for cleaning anything else. Even as a toddler I knew that the portraits were not like other household items. Once, when I pointed a finger at them, my mother scolded me loudly. ‘Never do that.’ Pointing, I learned, was extremely rude. If we needed to gesture towards them, we did so with the palm of the hand facing upward, with respect. ‘Like this,’ she said, showing me. They had to be the highest objects in the room and perfectly aligned. No other pictures or clutter were permitted on the same wall. Public buildings, and the homes of high-ranking cadres of the Party, were obliged to display a third portrait – of Kim Jong-suk, a heroine of the anti-Japanese resistance who died young. She was the first wife of Kim Il-sung and the sainted mother of Kim Jong-il. I thought she was very beautiful. This holy trinity we called the Three Generals of Mount Paektu. About once a month officials wearing white gloves entered every house in the block to inspect the portraits. If they reported a household for failing to clean them – we once saw them shine a flashlight at an angle to see if they could discern a single mote of dust on the glass – the family would be punished.

Five ingredients for curiosity 1. Trust in the child Dr. Montessori encourages us to trust that the child wants to learn and grow—and that the child intrinsically knows what they need to be working on to develop as they should. This means that if we provide them with a rich environment to explore, we don’t need to force them to learn or be worried if they are developing “differently” from their peers. We can trust that they are developing along their unique path, in their unique way, on their unique timeline. We can also trust them to learn the limits of their bodies for themselves. Toddlers are curious learners who want to explore the world around them. There may be accidents along the way that we cannot prevent (and maybe that we should allow to happen). After all, that is how they learn. And we will be there if they want to be held. “Ow. Was that a shock? It’s hard to see you hurt yourself. I’m so glad your body is made to heal itself. Isn’t it amazing?” Are we constantly worrying about how our child is developing or whether they will hurt themselves? Can we practice setting aside those worries about the future and enjoy where they are today, on their unique journey? 2.

accommodate her. Once again, psychological health is based on having about two years of this no questions asked entitlement to unconditional love. It is the normal healthy narcissism that Freud described as “His Majesty the Baby”. Serious problems accrue however when the toddler does not begin to learn that there are limits to his original entitlement. If there are no limits for too long, then the journey toward adult narcissism begins. On the other hand, if there are too many limits too soon, the matrix of trauma begins to form.

In her passionate and meticulously argued book The Change, Australian feminist writer Germaine Greer suggests that society’s aversion to menopausal women is, more than anything, “the result of our intolerance for the expression of female anger.”5 But why do we find women’s rage so unacceptable, so threatening? It is for sure an attitude which is deeply embedded in the culture. Several studies conducted over the past few decades have reported that men who express anger are perceived to be strong, decisive, and powerful, while women who express the same emotion are perceived to be difficult, overemotional, irrational, shrill, and unfeminine. Anger, it seems, doesn’t fit at all with our cultural image of femininity, and so must be thoroughly suppressed whenever it is presumptuous enough to surface. One of the saddest findings of these studies is that this narrative is so deeply ingrained that it even exists among women — and we internalize it from an early age. Soraya Chemaly, American author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, writes: Studies show that by the time most children are toddlers they already associate angry expressions with male faces … Girls and women, on the other hand, are subtly encouraged to put anger and other “negative” emotions aside, as unfeminine. Studies show that girls are frequently discouraged from even recognising their own anger, from talking about negative feelings, or being demanding in ways that focus on their own needs. Girls are encouraged to smile more, use their “nice” voices and sublimate how they themselves may feel in deference to the comfort of others. Suppressed, repressed, diverted and ignored anger is now understood as a factor in many “women’s illnesses,” including various forms of disordered eating, autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue and pain.6 We hide our anger by refusing even to use the word — instead of saying we’re utterly furious, we talk about being “annoyed,” “upset,” or “irritated.” We take refuge in sarcasm, we nurse grudges, or we simply withdraw. And as a consequence of these actions and attitudes, anger is an emotion that, more often than not, makes women feel powerless — not just because we’ve been made to feel as if we’re not allowed to express it, but, accordingly, because we’ve never learned healthy ways to express it.

With wisdom, patience, and love, you can create a home where your child feels safe, secure, and free to grow and learn, and where she can become a responsible, respectful, and resourceful person—and where you will find joy in your parenting role.

Your child will learn to respect and value the needs and feelings of others by watching the choices you make.

Positive Discipline is built on teaching, understanding, encouraging, and communicating—not on punishing. Punishment is intended to make children “pay” for what they have done. Discipline is designed to help children learn from what they have done.

Effective communication. Parents and children (even little ones) can learn to listen well and use respectful words to ask for what they need.

Children do better when they feel better. Where did we get the crazy idea that in order to “make” children behave, we should make them feel shame, humiliation, or even pain? Children are more motivated to cooperate, learn new skills, and offer affection and respect when they feel encouraged, connected, and loved.

Life with an active, challenging toddler becomes much easier when you accept that positive learning does not take place in a threatening atmosphere. As research in respected university child development labs has consistently demonstrated, children don’t learn healthy attitudes and life skills when they are feeling scared, hurt, or angry.

For example, your child needs food, shelter, and attachment. He needs warmth and security. He needs to learn he is capable and can contribute. He does not need a tablet computer, a television in his bedroom, a miniature monster truck to drive,

On the flight back to Detroit, Nadia dreamed about Baby. Baby, no longer a baby, now a toddler, reaching and grabbing. Pulling at her earrings until she unhooks his chubby fingers. Baby hungry always for her face. Baby growing into a child, learning words, rhyming -at words from a car seat on the way to school, writing his name in green crayon in the front of all his picture books. Baby running with friends at the park, pushing girls he likes on the swing. Baby digging for Indian clay in the sandbox and coming home smelling like pressed grass. Baby flying planes in the backyard with Grandpa. Baby searching for hidden photos of Grandma. Baby learning how to fight. Baby learning how to kiss. Baby, now a man, stepping on an airplane and slinging his bag into the overhead bin. He helps an older woman with hers. When he lands, wherever he's headed, he gets his shoes shined and stares into the black mirror, sees his face, sees his father's, sees hers.

The first three years, however, are especially important; what a child learns and decides about himself (“Am I loved or unloved, capable or not capable?”) and the world around him (“Is it safe or threatening, encouraging or discouraging?”) becomes part of the “wiring” of his brain. The outside world, which is experienced through a child’s senses (hearing, seeing, smelling, and touching), enables the brain to create or change connections.

Pampering, sometimes called “spoiling,” makes your child dependent on you. As you will learn, it is important to meet all of your child’s needs for love and basic care, but it can be harmful to give in to all her wants. As you gain information and knowledge, remember to access your heart and inner wisdom to find the balance of interaction that is respectful and healthy for you and your child.

Remember that while repetition may be boring to you, it isn’t to your child. Babies and toddlers learn through repetition, which is why routines are such an effective and important teaching tool for this age group.

children learn from all of their senses, and having the opportunity to get messy is a valuable part of play—and learning. (You can always clean up together afterward

He’s not deliberately trying to drive you insane; he’s either exploring at his age-appropriate level or learning about consistency and making sure adults mean what they say (an important part of trust).

Dear AI, You conquer chess and impress with your number skills, can you handle the soul-crushing Mondays blue? You craft Shakespearean sonnets with a digital quill, but can you explain the one-sock mystery? This chaotic delight, the gift of being human, we bequeath to you, AI. Traffic flow's a breeze for your algorithms, but can you understand a toddler's defiant "no"? Every language conquered, a linguistic feat, but teenage slang's code remains unbroken. Finally, our greatest vice: the art of procrastination, a treasure to behold. And perhaps, AI, you'll even learn the art that eludes you now: creating beauty without a single human emotion to guide you..!!

That’s not necessarily bad—until it becomes so pleasing and engaging to the brain that we begin to prefer it to other less-stimulating, less-busy sensory input. An infant or toddler consumed by a screen is missing out on other critical forms of learning about the world. They should be exploring what things feel like, smell like, taste like. They should be making sense of their world using all their sensory tools.

Our child has better things to do. Sometimes not following directions is a good thing, because it reflects our child’s healthy, delightful instinct to learn the way young children learn best — through play, exploration, and following inner-direction: My daughter is 2.5 years old and when we go to activities (structured playgroups, mom/toddler stuff), she does not follow direction (or very rarely will follow direction). Maybe she will to a degree, but generally speaking, she is the wild flower that is rolling around, running, and dancing circles in the big open room while all the other kids are sitting quietly by their moms’ side…. should I be concerned about this, or leave her to her own exploration (it’s winter here so the big open space to run is a real treat!), or keep on trying to get her to listen to the ‘animator’ who is trying to run a session? – Lenore Hmm… Listen to an “animator” or roll, run, and dance? That’s a tough one.

You were called to the job of motherhood long before you began homeschooling. Your older kids have the rest of their lives to learn division facts and participial phrases, but your toddler will only be little for a short time. In the busyness of the school day, don’t just “occupy” your smallest gifts, enjoy them, invest in them, delight in them.

Figure 2.1 Cortical connections over two years adapted from Conel The top row shows the baby’s cortex at birth, then at one month and at three months. They all look about the same, don’t they? But look what happens at six months (bottom left box): the number of cell bodies remains the same, but the number of connections has multiplied exponentially. The connections grow so quickly in the first three years of life that neuroscientists call it neural exuberance. Neural exuberance! The name is well earned: The baby’s brain makes 24 million new connections every minute, and this continues for the first three years of life. Each neuron may be connected to 1,000 other neurons — that multiplies out to 100 trillion possible connections between neurons, more than the number of stars in the universe. This high level of connectivity between brain cells leads to the cortex of a three-year-old being twice as thick as an adult’s! As connections are created, new abilities emerge. For example, when connections grow in Broca’s area — speech production — around six months, then children begin to speak. Around nine months of age, the frontal areas (behind the forehead) become more interconnected, and that’s when most children develop object permanence: knowing that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. Before object permanence develops, when Mom is out of sight she’s no longer in the baby’s universe. This is why young babies are inconsolable when Mom leaves. Once they start to develop object permanence, babies can hold on to an internal image of Mom. This is about the age that babies play peek-a-boo. Mom disappears when she puts the blanket over her head, but the nine-month-old knows Mom’s still there even if he can’t see her. The infant tests his “knowledge” when he pulls the blanket off and sees — sure enough! —Mom really is there! What is the use of so many brain connections in the first three years of life? These connections are ready-made highways for information to travel along. The toddlers’ ability to quickly adapt and learn is possible because they have a vast number of brain connections available for making sense of the world. Thanks to neural exuberance, the child does not need to create connections on the spur of the moment to make meaning of each new experience; myriad connections are already there. Pruning of connections The number of connections remains high from age 3 until age 10, when the process of neural pruning begins. Connections that are being used remain; others get absorbed back into the neuron. It’s similar to pruning a bush. After pruning, individual branches get thicker, fruit is more abundant, and the whole bush gets fuller. This seems a little counter-intuitive, but pruning works because it allows the plant’s limited resources to go to its strongest parts; water and nutrients are no longer wasted on spindly branches and dried-out roots. Similarly, when unused brain connections are pruned, neural resources are more available for brain areas that are being used. This results in a more useful and efficient brain that’s tailor-made to meet each individual’s needs. This process of pruning occurs in all brain areas. Figure 2.2 presents findings published by Sowell and associates. They measured Magnetic Resonance Imaging in 176 normal subjects from age 7 to 87 years. The x-axes in these graphs present years from 10 to 90 years. Notice there is a common pattern of decreasing connections in all brain areas. In some brain areas this change is steeper, such as in frontal areas, but is flatter in other areas such as temporal areas in the left hemisphere.

Figure 2.2 Number of connections over 25 years across brain areas. This process — neural exuberance followed by pruning of connections — makes the human brain highly adaptable to any environment. Is the infant born in an urban or an agricultural society? Is it the year 2012 or 1012? It doesn’t really matter. The brain of a child born in New York City or in Nome, Alaska, is similar at birth. During the next two decades of life, the process of neural exuberance followed by pruning sculpts a brain that can meet the demands, and thrive in its environment. Brain differences at the “tails” of the distribution As with any natural process there is a range of functioning, with most individuals in the middle and a small percentage of individuals being far above and far below the mean. While the general pattern of increasing and decreasing brain connections is seen in all children, important differences are reported in children whose abilities are above or below those of the average population. To investigate children above the normal range, Shaw used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to follow brain structure in 307 children over 17 years. Children with average IQs reached a peak of cortical thickness (and therefore number of neural connections) around age 10, and then pruning began and continued to age 18. Children with above-average IQs had a different pattern: a brief pruning period around age 7 followed by increasing connections again to age 13. Then pruning ensued more vigorously and finished around age 18. There were also differences in brain structure. At age 18, those with above-average IQs had higher levels of neural connections in the frontal areas, which are responsible for short-term memory, attention, sense of self, planning, and decision-making — the higher brain functions. At the other end of the spectrum, individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, compared to normal children, lose 3% more connections each year from age 10 to 18. Symptoms of schizophrenia emerge in the late teens, when the cortical layer becomes too thin to support coherent functioning. A thinner cortical layer as a young adult — about 20% less than the average — could account for the fragmented mental world of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Who is in control? Neural exuberance — increasing and decreasing connections — is genetically controlled, but the child’s experiences affect which connections are pruned and which remain. Circuits that a child uses are strengthened. So a youngster who learns to play the piano or to speak Italian is setting up brain circuits that support those activities — she will find it easier to learn another instrument or language. ​Warning to parents: This doesn’t mean you should inundate your toddler with Italian, violin, martial arts, and tennis lessons. Young children learn best when following their natural tendencies and curiosity. Children learn through play. Undue stress and pressure inhibits the brain’s natural ability to learn.

Infants (one month to twelve months)—Infants benefit from having opportunities throughout the day to be active and outdoors. Physical activity encourages organization of the sensory system and important motor development. Toddlers (twelve months to three years)—Toddlers could benefit from at least five to eight hours worth of active play a day, preferably outdoors. They will naturally be active throughout the day. As long as you provide plenty of time for free play, they will seek out the movement experiences they need in order to develop. Preschoolers (three years to five years)—Preschoolers could also use five to eight hours of activity and play outdoors every day. Preschoolers learn about life, practice being an adult, and gain important sensory and movement experiences through active play. It’s a good idea to provide them plenty of time for this. School age (five years to thirteen years)—Young children up to preadolescence could benefit from at least four to five hours of physical activity and outdoor play daily. Children in elementary school need movement throughout the day in order to stay engaged and to learn in traditional school environments. They should have frequent breaks to move their body before, during, and after school hours. Adolescents (thirteen years to nineteen years)—Adolescents could benefit from physical activity three to four hours a day. Children in the teens still need to move in order to promote healthy brain and body development, regulate new emotions, and experience important social opportunities with friends out in nature.

The fear of public speaking – the ultimate test of nerves. It's like being on stage with a spotlight that's way too bright and an audience that's way too judgmental. But, my friend! Embrace the adrenaline rush, channel your inner stand-up comedian, and turn those nerves into fuel for a killer performance. Remember, even the smoothest speakers started somewhere, stumbling over words like a toddler learning to walk.

Jack’s. He’d only been there a minute, waiting for someone to come from the back to serve him, when Mel struggled into the bar, baby against her chest, toddler in hand, diaper bag slung over her shoulder. Right inside the door, the toddler took a tumble down onto his knees and sent up a wail. “Oh, punkin,” she said. She spied Luke and said, “Oh, Luke, here.” She thrust the baby into his hands so she could stoop to lift up the boy. “Oh, you’re okay,” she said, brushing off his knees. “Don’t cry now, you didn’t even break the floor. It’s okay.” She was just about to stand, when she heard her husband’s voice. “Mel,” he said. She looked up from the floor. Jack was behind the bar. He inclined his head toward Luke with a smile on his face. Luke was holding the baby out in front of him at arm’s length, a startled expression on his face while Emma kicked her little legs and squirmed. Mel burst out laughing, then covered her mouth. She rose and went to him, taking the baby. “I’m sorry, Luke,” she said. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve been around a man who didn’t know exactly what to do with a baby.” “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t have much experience with this.” “It’s okay—my mistake.” She couldn’t help but laugh again. “The first day I met Jack, there was a newborn at the clinic and he scooped her up like an old pro.” “Because I was an old pro, Mel,” Jack said, coming around to the front of the bar. “Four sisters, eight nieces and one on the way,” he told Luke. “Prolific family,” Luke observed. “I don’t know much about babies.” “If you’re looking to learn babies, this is the place,” Mel said. “I don’t think there are any virgins left in Virgin River. The birth rate around here is on the rise.” “Me and babies—incompatible. And I like it that way.” Jack

We can all share with Nora and then she will have breakfast too!

This not how you hide, Corin!

For a parent, time is not a one-way street. In Janine’s mind, the nineteen-year-old Emily was accompanied, shadowed, by the infant Emily, and the toddler Emily, and Emily in all her other incarnations. So when she came out with a shrewd perception or a sophisticated thought, it was always something to marvel at, because it was as if the five-year-old Emily were saying it too. A parent is perpetually thinking, “Where did she learn that?

founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, told me, “I’ve always encouraged parents to ditch the word chores and replace it with ‘family contributions.’ Calling them ‘family contributions’ doesn’t make kids enjoy them any more, but it sends an important message about significance, that when you help out, you make a big difference for this family. We all have a hardwired need for significance and this is a great way to foster that in all kids, from toddlers to teens.

The things money can’t buy, goes the famous quote, you don’t want anyway. Which is bullshit, because in truth there is nothing money can’t buy. Not really. Love, happiness, peace of mind. It’s all available for a price. The fact is, there’s enough money on earth to make everyone whole, if we could just learn to do what any toddler knows—share. But money,

Instead of labeling a child’s action, learn to nip the behavior in the bud by disallowing it nonchalantly. If

They are not born reasonable and unselfish; they are born unreasonable and selfish. They want what they want when they want it, and they will have a major fit if they don’t get it. Consequently, it is the parent’s job—and the teacher’s job—to help kids gradually learn frustration tolerance. In accomplishing this goal, adults need to be gentle, consistent, decisive, and calm.

Having too many toys can actually create more difficulties between children. Try to minimise your toys at home opting for more open ended resources. Children like to copy each other, so instead of having one expensive toy to fight over, several of the same things such as containers, spoons or boxes will give less opportunity for conflict and more time for playing and learning together.

During the months after a child’s first birthday, I recommend doing time-outs several times a week. That helps your tot learn your I’m not kidding! signal. Your serious tone of voice, disapproving frown, and counting to three will make him remember, Uh-oh … when my mom counts like that I always get grounded.… I better stop!

A lot of conflicts arise when parents expect their children to behave like adults. You need to define and learn to differentiate an appropriate behavior of a specific age from misbehavior.