Dear Dr. Debbie,
Our just turned two-year-old is a whirlwind of energy. Except when he’s ripping the pages of a book. Quietly. Behind the couch. He’s broken so many things around the house I’ve lost count. Short of strapping him in the high chair when he’s awake, what can we do to control his destructive actions?
Can’t Have Nice Things
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Dear CHNT,
It sounds as if you have a normal two-year-old; he just needs more direct interaction with a beloved adult. Two’s are avid explorers – learning about the physics of their world. Your child’s interests probably include everything he can see and reach in pursuit of knowledge. He looks for novel items to explore as well as familiar items to re-test for confirmation of prior information. His mind is cataloging all this knowledge. You can effectively control what he has access to if you see the world from his point of view and remove temptations. What you don’t want him to learn is that you only pay attention to him after you hear a splash or a crash.
Curiosity
The mind of a two-year-old is constantly abuzz. In fact, a two-year-old is on his way to reaching his peak of mental vivacity by around age three at which time his brain will have twice the synaptic connections among its neurons as an adult’s brain has!
So feed his curiosity with explorations around the house and out in the world. You can add depth to his knowledge by sharing some of yours. For example, if he notices that the sunlight streaming in the window is reflected by a metal spoon, help him move the spoon around to cast the reflection on different spots around the room. If you encourage his enjoyment of light reflection, this could lead to discussion, maybe when he’s a bit older, of why an image caught in a shiny spoon is upside down. For now, just pull out a few spoons and have fun bouncing light. Look for other solar reflections when you take walks in the neighborhood. Does his stroller have exposed metal? Your car probably does. Look together for glints of sunshine everywhere!
When you talk with him about what he’s discovering, he learns that what he is learning is of interest to you and that you are a good resource for further information and for clearing up confusion. This melding of the minds will come in handy in the coming years!
Environmental Design
You could leave a few spoons in his toy bin if you’d rather encourage this activity at play time instead of meal time. There’s a tradeoff between child proofing and supervision. The more your home has been made to accommodate your toddler’s learning, the less carefully you need to watch his every move. It should be safe for him to play with things that are left in his reach.
Likewise, hide, and if necessary, securely fasten shut, anything breakable, costly, or sentimentally significant. A two-year-old cannot foresee danger, doesn’t have good control of his hands yet, and has no capacity to value objects you hold dear – other than their momentary play value. In other words, do not display great grandpa’s diving medals on the coffee table if you expect to prevent them from “accidentally” diving into a toilet.
Do some house exploring yourself. If you limit everything on lower shelves to items that can be carried around, rolled, stacked, squished, dropped, slung over a shoulder, or otherwise “explored” by your child, you will have fewer regrets. This means that board books, cloth books, or vinyl books, durably made expressly for children under the age of three, are the only books available for him. You can also have a basket of magazine sheets and junk mail for him to tear to his heart’s content. Pretty soon you can add supervised scissor practice. The scissors stay hidden until you’re available to sit with the novice cutter.
The kitchen should be similarly organized with non-breakable bowls and safe-to-explore tools and utensils on the bottom shelves and in the lower drawers. (It doesn’t take very many pinches for a kitchen explorer to learn how to safely open and shut cabinet doors and drawers. Stay close while he learns this.) And as with scissors, periodically introduce kitchen skills, such as stirring with a spoon and cutting with a butter knife. You are teaching him how to be careful with your direct instruction.
Think about every room of the house and what would satisfy your child’s ever-present need to occupy his mind and his hands in each space.
Some indoor spaces work well for his large motor skills – crawling up and down stairs until he gets the hang of ascending and descending one step at a time. Little ones may also enjoy “bumping stairs” which is a safe way to descend one step at a time on your rump.
Remember that outdoor spaces are much more conducive for a child to learn about how his body moves in space – up hills and down, on grass, dirt, sand, gravel, and sidewalk. A beachball is perfect for gaining arm and leg control with a cooperative partner.
Positive Attention
Arrange your time during this phase of parenting so that there is plenty of opportunity to be with your son as he learns about his world. Keep your mind on what his mind is learning about. In a year or so he’ll spend more and more of his time with playmates his own age. For now, you’ll find that if you devote an adequate amount of time for supporting you son’s curiosity and for sharing discoveries with him he will more easily choose appropriate play things on his own. When that happens, you can successfully divert your attention to your phone or other tasks, checking in with him every so often to remind him of your interest in what he’s doing.
Positive attention fuels a child for positive behavior.
Dr. Debbie
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum www.theccm.org.
The museum is open daily with summer hours 10 am to 5 pm. Online reservations are available or call: 410-990-1993. Each Thursday there is a guided nature walk at 10:30 am. Art and Story Times are on Monday mornings at 10:30 am.
While supplies last, families can purchase a Solar Powered Art base to which you add your own design. These can be contributed to an exhibit about solar energy and pollinators, or take your piece with you to enjoy its movement in the sunshine in your home.
Read more of Dr. Wood’s Good Parenting columns by clicking here.
