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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1848, the twenty-five-year-old Gage was working on a railroad bed when he was distracted by some activity behind him. As he turned his head, the large rod he was using to pack powder explosives struck a rock, caused a spark and the powder exploded. The rod flew up through his jaw, traveled behind his eye, made its way through the left-hand side of his brain and shot out the other side. Despite his somewhat miraculous survival, Gage was never the same again. The once jovial, kind young man became aggressive, rude and prone to swearing at the most inappropriate times. As a toddler, Alonzo Clemons also suffered a traumatic head injury, after falling onto the bathroom floor. Left with severe learning difficulties and a low IQ, he was unable to read or write. Yet from that day on he showed an incredible ability to sculpt. He would use whatever materials he could get his hands on—Play-Doh, soap, tar—to mold a perfect image of any animal after the briefest of glances. His condition was diagnosed as acquired savant syndrome, a rare and complex disorder in which damage to the brain appears to increase people’s talent for art, memory or music. SM, as she is known to the scientific world, has been held at gunpoint and twice threatened with a knife. Yet she has never experienced an ounce of fear. In fact, she is physically incapable of such emotion. An unusual condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease has slowly calcified her amygdalae, two almond-shaped structures deep in the center of the brain that are responsible for the human fear response. Without fear, her innate curiosity sees her approach poisonous spiders without a second’s thought. She talks to muggers with little regard for her own safety. When she comes across deadly snakes in her garden, she picks them up and throws them away.

Play is a crucial building block to your toddler's later learning.

The fact that the stakes are higher is all the more reason to provide teenagers with as many opportunities as possible to make their own decisions and learn from the consequences. Just as it was critical for the toddler to fumble with her shoelaces before mastering the art of shoelace tying, so is it critical for the adolescent to fumble with difficult tasks and choices in order to master the art of making independent, healthy, moral decisions that can be called upon in the absence of parents’ directives. We all want our children to put their best foot forward. But in childhood and adolescence, sometimes the best foot is the one that is stumbled on, providing an opportunity for the child to learn how to regain balance, and right himself.

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?

Looking with his eyes? Seriously? What else would he look around with?” Trish nonchalantly uses her middle finger to scratch her temple. “Toddlers learn by making connections between the body part and the action.” Vince blinks. “Oh, so talking to a kid like that’s normal?” “Someday I hope to have a conversation where I don’t sound like a character from Star Wars.” “I can see how you’d look forward to that.

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.

This not how you hide, Corin!

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

Kids don’t have to stop the thoughts. They simply need to change their relationship to their thoughts. The more your child can learn to trust themselves, and not their anxiety, the more they will be able to put the worry thoughts aside.

you want to leave the park and your child isn’t ready to go, give her a hug and validate her feelings: “You’re really upset right now. I know you want to stay, and 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 to pamper your child by letting her stay at the park longer, she would not have the opportunity to learn from experience that she can survive disappointment—and she might be learning that you can be manipulated.

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.

Children learn respect by seeing what it looks like in action.

A toddler learns discipline best when he experiences natural consequences for his behavior, rather than a disconnected punishment like time-out. If a child throws food, his mealtime is over. If a child refuses to get dressed, we won’t be able to go to the park today. These parental responses appeal to a child’s sense of fairness.

Childhood is a time of discovery and learning. Play is vitally important for early child development. It allows them to express their creativity and learn to interact with other children. For them it is both work and relaxation. While children love exploring and we must give them enough time to play, many infants and toddlers also find reassurance in repetitive routines, and we need to build this stability into their day.

Think of learning to dance like learning to walk. You know when you're a toddler and you fall down? No one is like, 'You know, this walking thing isn't for you. Maybe you should just keep crawling because you're not a walker.' We shouldn't treat learning to dance any differently. We've all gotta go through awkward to get to cool.

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.

When our kids are infants and toddlers it’s highly appropriate for us to engage in a running monologue about their environment—that’s how they learn the language—but once they are toddlers and can carry on a bit of conversation, we want them to be doing their share of the talking in response to our good, open-ended questions. Since conversation is the best mechanism for practicing and seeing the results of critical thinking, below are sample dialogues between parent and child that demonstrate ways you can teach your kids to think for themselves. These dialogues employ the continual questioning approach, which boils down to you, the parent, being always interested in the “what,” “how,” or “why” underneath whatever your kid has just said. This method will work regardless of your kid’s age, though the subject matter will change and grow more complex as the child matures and becomes more intellectually sophisticated.

He’s gone? Then why can’t I look?” “Just be patient. They’re almost done.” His hold relaxed as Hugh reached up and patted her on the head. Her mouth dropped open. He actually patted her on the head. Like she was an obedient toddler or a puppy who’d learned to sit on command. After the all clear, she was so going to punch him. Hard. In his stupid, too-appealing face.

Bring all the wreckage to people you trust. I know it’s awful to be seen in all your suffering. I have hidden from my friends in my own house when they have stopped over to check on me, only to realize that, because I’d forgotten the front door was open, they could see me hiding. Like a toddler who covers her eyes and says, “You can’t see me.” I’m so thankful that people who love me came into my house and saw me, right in the suffering. Because that’s how we get through.

Emotional awareness refers to recognizing and identifying your emotions, and being sensitive to the presence of other people’s feelings. You don’t need to afraid of showing your feelings in front of your kids. Even anger has its place as long as it’s expressed constructively and respectfully. If you hold back from showing emotions, then your kids will learn, “Dad and Mom don’t have these emotions, neither should I.

What they need to learn is disciplining their behaviors, not their feelings. Say, “You are losing the toy for the rest of the day because you are screaming, and it bothers other people.” Or “You are going to time-out because you just hit your brother.

If parents try to fix the issue immediately by saying, “Stop crying! It’s not that bad!”, kids will learn some emotions are not acceptable and will be safer not to experience their feelings. In this case, kids are losing the opportunity to learn from the difficult experiences and understand all emotions are valid, just some feelings are “good” and some are “bad”.

Whatever happens to a baby contributes to the emotional and perceptual map of the world that its developing brain creates. As my colleague Bruce Perry explains it, the brain is formed in a “use-dependent manner.”5 This is another way of describing neuroplasticity, the relatively recent discovery that neurons that “fire together, wire together.” When a circuit fires repeatedly, it can become a default setting—the response most likely to occur. If you feel safe and loved, your brain becomes specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it specializes in managing feelings of fear and abandonment. As infants and toddlers we learn about the world by moving, grabbing, and crawling and by discovering what happens when we cry, smile, or protest.

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?

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..!!

Children need food, comforting, shelter, touch, smiles, eye contact, and the opportunity to play and grow up safe, strong, and healthy. Meet the new toddler’s needs on demand, and she will gradually learn to delay gratification and become more and more able to be responsible for meeting some of her own needs as she grows and develops.

Children test their parents to find out if they will be consistent and trustworthy. Helping children learn to regulate their behavior is about providing appropriate structure and guidance for children, not about punishing inappropriate behavior. Parents have the primary responsibility for providing the support, teaching, and system of rules and expectations that children need to grow up emotionally healthy. These external structures are necessary for children to develop their own internal structure and guidance. Appropriate structure contributes to the development of children’s attachment and self-esteem and helps to make them feel loved and capable. Neglect and punishment, on the other hand, leads to feelings of being unlovable, unworthy, and incompetent.

How do you feel?” Claudia Jewett Jarratt (1994) recommends a strategy to begin helping children identify their emotions correctly in a technique called “The Five Faces.” Five cards with simple drawings of faces depicting sad, mad, happy, scared, and lonely are used to facilitate conversations about which feeling the person has. To learn the “game,” the toddler might be asked, “Which face shows how you feel about having macaroni and cheese for lunch?” Gradually, the cards are used to talk about more important emotionally reactive situations. Even children whose language is not sophisticated enough to participate in the dialogue, but who seem stuck in the “angry” mode, can benefit from an exploration of emotions.

learn they indeed can calm down, can follow directions, can sleep on their own.

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 bxes for recycling, reading the DVD extras pamphlet from 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.

Research on brain development illustrates that babies are born with the biological expectation to be a part of a mutually beneficial relationship and that positive relationships are the single most important factor in healthy development.  According to Woodcock-Ross, Hooper, Stenhouse, & Sheaff (2009), “the interactional quality of early relationship experiences has a biological impact on the rapidly developing brain, alongside effects upon psychological health and social functioning” (p. 1009).  In fact, early relationships create the foundation upon which all other learning can occur.  “Each achievement – language and learning, social development, the emergence of self-regulation – occurs in the context of close relationships with others” (National Academy of Science, 2000).   Due to the importance of early relationships for optimal brain development, relational risk factors for infants in the form of unmet emotional needs or negative caregiving experiences places them at an increased risk for mental health problems (Fish & Chapman, 2004).  This risk is mitigated within the context of caring, nurturing relationships with adult caregivers.

At the time of birth, a child’s brain weighs approximately 400 grams and is the only organ that is not yet fully developed (Scientific Learning Corporation, 1999).  By the age of three, the brain has grown to approximately 1100 grams, or approximately 80 percent of its adult size (Scientific Learning Corporation, 1999).  During the time between birth and age three, a child’s brain develops more connections and acquires more knowledge than at any other period in life.  According to Bruce Perry, “the human brain develops to approximately 85 percent of its adult size in the first three years of life and puts in place the majority of systems and structures for all future emotional, behavioral, social, and physiological functioning” (2009).  In addition, research shows that brain growth is cumulative; that is, future growth is dependent on the establishment of a healthy foundation during the early stages of development (Gamache, Mirabell, & Avery, 2006).

There is no simple way to determine when and where to get help. Many factors come into play, including the child’s age, family’s financial status, insurance, knowledge of resources, religious affiliation, availability of services in community, and so on. Parents may seek outside assistance for their adopted child when other factors such as a divorce, job loss, or other stresses compound the family needs. Parents are generally in the best position to determine when to get help, but advice from relatives, family physicians, teachers, and others in a position to know the family should be carefully considered. Services for children with special needs are provided by a variety of professionals. A physician—pediatrician or the family practitioner—is usually the place to begin. Families may be referred to a neurologist for a thorough assessment and diagnosis of neurological functioning (related to cognitive or learning disabilities, seizure disorders or other central nervous system problems). For specific communication difficulties, families may consult with a speech and language therapist, while a physical therapist would develop a treatment plan to enhance motor development. A rehabilitation technologist or an occupational therapist prescribes adaptive aids or activities of daily living. Early childhood educators specializing in working with children with special needs may be called a variety of titles, including Head Start teachers, early childhood special education teacher, or early childhood specialist.

Toddlers are delightful works-in-progress. Parents will want to learn as much as possible about toddler development so that they can better understand their child’s stage of development, and respond appropriately to their child’s behavior. Even though many adopted toddlers arrive home with physical, cognitive, language, or physical delays, there are many things parents can do to foster their child’s development. Nurturing a child’s growth by providing developmentally appropriate activities is one of the great joys of parenting.

Sharing is a learned behaviour, and the best way for your child to learn to share is through role modelling sharing and generosity yourself. If your household is a world of “mine” and “yours” your child will quickly learn to protect “their things.

But do toddlers simply learn this behavior along the way and mimic it? When I called up one of the study’s coauthors, Kiley Hamlin, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, she pointed out a couple of things. Yes, toddlers see plenty of people being nice to them, but if they have older siblings, they may see plenty of the opposite behavior as well. “What tells me that the generosity isn’t basic mimicry is how early they start giving stuff to people,” she said. “Most 12-month-olds will sit with you and insist that you take their gross Cheerios, over and over. And insist that you eat them, and like them. It’s not just that they want to give them to you; they want to watch and make sure you enjoy it.” She believes simple evolution is the explanation here: We live in groups for protection and companionship, and doing so requires cooperation and generosity. The

began. A chief element in positioning the new Barbie was her promotion. In 1984, after a campaign that featured "Hey There, Barbie Girl" sung to the tune of "Georgy Girl," Mattel launched a startling series of ads that toyed with female empowerment. Its slogan was "We Girls Can Do Anything," and its launch commercial, driven by an irresistibly upbeat soundtrack, was a sort of feminist Chariots of Fire. Responding to the increased number of women with jobs, the ad opens at the end of a workday with a little girl rushing to meet her business-suited mother and carrying her mother's briefcase into the house. A female voice says, "You know it, and so does your little girl." Then a chorus sings, "We girls can do anything." The ad plays with the possibility of unconventional gender roles. A rough-looking Little Leaguer of uncertain gender swaggers onscreen. She yanks off her baseball cap, her long hair tumbles down, and—sigh of relief—she grabs a particularly frilly Barbie doll. (The message: Barbie is an amulet to prevent athletic girls from growing up into hulking, masculine women.) There are images of gymnasts executing complicated stunts and a toddler learning to tie her shoelaces. (The message: Even seemingly minor achievements are still achievements.) But the shot with the most radical message takes place in a laboratory where a frizzy-haired, myopic brunette peers into a microscope. Since the seventies, Barbie commercials had featured little girls of different races and hair colors, but they were always pretty. Of her days in acting school, Tracy Ullman remarked in TV Guide that she was the "ugly kid with the brown hair and the big nose who didn't get [cast in] the Barbie commercials." With "We Girls," however, Barbie extends her tiny hand to bookish ugly ducklings; no longer a snooty sorority rush chairman, she is "big-tent" Barbie.

첫볼넷 DU-55.COM 추천코드:ASAS7 첫충10%-매충5% 단폴&크로스가능/네임드사다리1.95 홀짝-좌우-출줄/달팽이-로하이/매쿼실시간/국.해외스타리그&LOL/각종스폐셜등. 많은 이벤트로 여러분을 맞이하고 있으니 구경오셔서 둘러보고 가세요. When a toddler is learning how to walk, they never stop and think "Maybe this isn't for me". 아기들이 걸음마를 배울때, 절대 "이건 내 적성에 안맞는것 같아"라고 하지 않는다

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

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

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.

felt that Gallaudet, which tended to attract deaf people who signed and didn’t speak, would not be academically challenging. No one had ever explained to me that the deaf kids who don’t speak, don’t do so because they weren’t exposed to any language whatsoever until they were toddlers—neither sign language nor a spoken language—and that affects their ability to learn. I didn’t know that they were no less smart than the deaf kids who spoke, like me.