Tuesday's Teacher - Age One to Three...

I'm always harping on the stages of development, and that can be as dull as it comes. But more and more, I'm finding that children who are not living within the bounds of what nature has established are losing out on their lives, on being happy, on growing and developing the way it was meant to be.

That peculiar age: one to three is an especially difficult age for many parents to handle emotionally. Their beautiful baby is suddenly walking - toddling - and he or she is just not the same and no matter how much mom or dad cuddles, holds, and whispers baby nonsense into those sweet little ears. He's a toddler, and he only wants to push away and run his little legs off!

At one, the child is not an infant anymore. He's a toddler, and his life is changing, and so his care is changing too. There is so much for a child to learn between the ages of one and three, there is no room to allow infancy to continue. He has to learn what the word "no" REALLY means. He has to learn to eat at a table with a fork and out of a cup. He needs to learn to sleep in a big bed and perhaps give up his nap. He needs to learn to be quiet when it's appropriate. He needs to learn language and communication skills. He needs to learn words so that he can communicate. He has to learn to wait, to stand in line nicely with his parent, to take his turn, clean up his toys, put his things away, put on his coat, shoes, and gloves. He needs to learn to climb, to run, when to climb and when to run. He needs to learn to come when he is called, to dress himself, to use the toilet, to comb his hair, to brush his teeth, and to say "thank you" and why he is saying "thank you."

It's a lot; it's a whole lot, and if we spend six months of his toddlerhood keeping him a baby, that only gives the toddler eighteen months to do everything a toddler needs to do to get to the next stage.

Parents who use the expression, "He's just not ready" are usually meaning "I'm not ready" to let go of my infant. And who is that fair to?

Expectations for a child who is one to three, are not cruel and inhuman punishment. Expectations begin at one when the child is no longer an infant. The child will have those expectations put on him the rest of his life. These "expectations" establish a child as a functioning member of the community. Avoiding the expectations of life are not doing the child any favors. Letting a two or three year old child behave like a screaming, undisciplined, mess making, indulgent infant are not contributing to society, but detracting from it. And the fault is not the child's but the parent's.

But one does not get from expectation to accomplishment without an enormous amount of work on the side of the parent. It's a daily struggle, a daily chore to repeat a thousand times, "NO" or have to push a little chair to the table, or clean up spills, or change soiled pants, or chase across the grass or down the hall. Teaching, re-teaching, repeating, redoing, undoing, and redoing for two years in a marathon race to the age of three. And thank God it's only two years.

Beginning on time with discipline and training will do more for a child than letting him remain an infant because, "he's not ready."

So what do you do when the child turns three and none of the above accomplishments have been accomplished...next time.