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source: DeSuMama.com
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Synopsis
5. Let your child play
and have the freedom to create and fail in their own way.
By Jonathan Wai
Many
new parents may be too busy to realize it, but toddler whisperer Tovah Klein of Columbia University argues that “the ages from two
to five are crucial for your child’s long-term healthy development and
success—for laying the foundation of who they will become over time.” As the
father of a young boy who is nearing two, these are some of the things I think
about when I consider his future. Am I doing what’s best for his development?
How much structure should I provide? How much freedom? Why is he not doing what
I want? As Tovah points out in our conversation: “Toddlers are not there
thinking they want to make you look good.”
In
her book How Toddlers Thrive, she addresses these questions and
much, much more. Yet one of the crucial lessons of her book is that routines
and the rhythm of the day provide the structure in place so our young children
can have the freedom to play, to develop, and to build the foundation that can
allow them to thrive later in life as healthy, adjusted, and fully-functioning
adults. But beyond providing the appropriate baseline, a large part of laying
that early foundation is about we as parents not getting in the way of our
child’s natural development.
From
that perspective, although there is much more wisdom in her book than can be
shared in this article, here are some lessons I learned about parenting young
children when I talked with the toddler whisperer.
1. The crib as a metaphor
for raising a child: kids need boundaries so they can have guidance but also
freedom.
“The
essence of my book’s message is that setting limits and boundaries is critical.
So every day there are routines. First we put our socks on, then our shoes, and
then we go outside. That sets up a structure, but whether they put on their
sneakers or sandals can be up to them is the parent getting out of the child’s
way. The foundation should be set, but then the child should be allowed to
choose how they play or build the block structure, but we can say things like
‘You can’t throw the blocks.’ Say you have a backyard with a fence, you can sit
in the backyard and your child can play. But you’ve got a fence or hedges where
you’ve drawn the parameter. Which is similar to when your child is in the crib
and has some safe place or structure where they have the freedom to wind down
and rehearse what happened at the end of the day before falling asleep.”
“We’re
all ready for them to grow up. We 'overadultize' them. And as soon as kids can
talk, we make all these assumptions about their maturity level. They take in
and are managing so much during the day, they’re trying to control those
impulses, they’re learning miles a minute. And the crib is this safe place
where they can just exhale. It’s like we’ve put these structural boundaries
around them. So I literally see it as a metaphor for raising a child. If you
put the structure and boundaries around them, then he can roll around in his
crib or play with his animals, or look at books or whatever without you there.
If he’s having a conversation with himself for an hour you’ve given him that
gift. You’re giving him the gift of ‘I can be by myself, I can have my own
ideas, there are no demands on me, I don’t have to please anyone, I can just
wonder.’ He doesn’t have to battle his own impulses which is ‘I wish I could
jump out of that bed.’”
2. One way of setting
boundaries is limiting screen time: “if we use them as pacifiers and think our
children are going to get smarter we make a mistake”
“The
American Academy of Pediatrics came out again in the last few years saying
there’s no benefits for screens for children under two. For children two to
five, it should limited to no more than an hour a day. I think there’s some
real smarts in that. Screens tend to be used by parents as pacifiers for young
children because it’s like our pacifier. But before the age of five are the
years young children are learning the most important basic skills of
self-regulation, delay of gratification, and handling of emotions which are
being set up in the brain. If you get that in place you’re putting in a really
good foundation for later. Where the screens interfere with that is they pull
children completely out of the here and now. It’s very enticing and addictive.
Screen addiction may soon be a real clinical term. Programs are being invented
to stop people from checking their phones. Children use downtime to think, be
bored and wonder—that’s where imagination comes from. Some children have
imaginary friends, some create blocks or trains and they come up with stories.
And language comes from that. But you always do that when you have the space
and time when information isn’t constantly being thrown at you—when adults and
screens aren’t telling you what to do.”
“Screens
need a tremendous amount of parental guidance. It’s very hard to get a
smartphone out of a toddlers hands. It’s like video games. There’s so much we
don’t know about early brain development and screens that the best caution is
to say less is better. There’s also no evidence that children who aren’t on
screens before the age of five are going to be behind in any way. Children are
surrounded by screens, so they are going to be in their lives, but if we use
them as pacifiers and think our children are going to get smarter we make a
mistake. If it’s one activity of the day where we look at animal pictures or
pictures of a family or you play your favorite iPad game for 20 minutes that’s
not going to hurt anybody, but it takes the parent to put the structure around
it for sure. No kid can self-regulate that.”
3. Realize that your
child may not be just like you, and that can be a good thing.
“It’s
hard when our children aren’t like us or have qualities that we don’t
understand. We tend to try to mold our children to be like us. But if you’re
the kind of person who is shy and not outgoing and you have this robustly
outgoing vivacious child, it can be very confusing as to what they need. You
may try to quiet them down, you may try to stop them at the playground and say
‘Don’t go up to that person!’ We tend to see in our children what we
understand. If you were a rambunctious person or remember being like that as a
child it’s easier to understand that behavior. So much of it is getting to know
yourself. And you want to put up the proper guidance so it’s not a hands off
free for all. Ultimately all of us want our children to be polite, kind, decent
human beings, but the toddler years are not the time that children show that,
even though they may model us.”
“So
if you’re very stuck on please and thank you, you are constantly interfering
with your child who is like ‘Hey! I see something interesting over there. Let
me just go over there and look at it.’. That’s because toddlers live exactly in
the moment. They’re not thinking about whether they’re going to be liked,
they’re wondering ‘That’s a beautiful flower, let me run over to it.’ We live
on a much bigger plane, planning ahead, looking ahead, thinking ‘Oh if my child
does that will people think he’s rude?’ So much of that comes from who we are
and how we see ourselves. If I see myself as polite, then toddlers are going to
be very very embarrassing 24 hours a day. It might help if you can say to
yourself ‘I know he’s a really compassionate human being but right now he’s
just so curious.’ Being aware of what biases we bring from our own upbringing
and life experiences is not easy. But I can promise you this much: when we have
more objectivity and see ourselves as separate from our children and their
behavior, we are much more likely to be able to guide our children in a loving,
supportive, yet firm way.”
4. Be flexible in your
expectations: “Toddlers are not there thinking they want to make you look
good.”
“Where
do we get in the way of our children and where do we get in the way of
ourselves as parents? We all go into parenting with expectations. Some of them
are worries and trepidation. Lots of them are expectations of what it will be
like. When parents allow themselves to shift that once they’re with their
children, in a way it frees them up to parent in a way the child needs. Say
we’re talking about the transition from infant to toddler, we never think infants
are going to take care of themselves, we’re going to comfort and feed them. But
when the toddler gets up on their feet and starts to walk away, and has much
more of a personality of their own, that’s often when the challenge comes for
parents, and that’s where the shift in expectations need to take place. And
this is when parents need to think about how this is about my child, who is
saying ‘I want to be my own person, you might not like how I do things, but you
gotta let me do them.’”
“Having
a very demanding two or three year old in your life is very frustrating. ‘Only
the red cup will do, I’m not gonna wear that shirt, don’t make me turn the TV
off.’ And this is a reconciliation point for parents, where it’s not that their
child is a bad person, it’s that they’re really demanding to be seen for who
they are. And that’s what the toddler years are about. This might not be fun
all the time, but if I see that my child is really just trying to figure out
who they are, I actually enjoy being a parent more. But if you see it as you
need an obedient child and you’re being defied, then you’re constantly in
control battles. So that’s where the shift in expectation is often during the
toddler years because that’s where the real challenges of parenting come in.
How do I get my child some limits and boundaries but still let them be who they
are? And who they are is not always so socialized at this point. Toddlers are
not there thinking they want to make you look good. Their role is to figure out
who they are. And that’s often going to be an embarrassment. They’re going to
have a meltdown in the middle of a public place, or they’re gonna say something
rude to the friendly neighbor, like “Get away from me.”
5. Let your child play
and have the freedom to create and fail in their own way.
Creativity
is about thinking, curiosity, imagination, and decision making. If a child
really feels that they can trust themselves and feel good about their ideas,
they can spiral that into anything they want. When you first give them some
crayons, they’re going to think ‘Oh, what am I going to do with these?’ But if
you’ve been told over and over that there’s only one way to do something, then
when you give your child crayons, they immediately look to the adult and say
‘What should I draw?’ or ‘How should I draw it?’ But when they’ve really been
given the space to be okay with their ideas and not criticized then they pick
it up and say ‘I wonder what I can do with this? Well I can bang with it and it
makes these spots. I can go round and round and it makes these squiggles. And
these squiggles look like an animal!’ They just keep spiraling with ideas. But that
really comes out of being able to try things and test things and make what we
might call mistakes—you know try it one way and then try it another. Many would
prefer that young children spend their time tracing letters, obediently
following adult directions, or matching figures on a worksheet. But this view
of play is an adult view. The Toddler Center—which I direct—is based upon the
notion that if you place young children in a stimulating, safe environment that
is set up for their exploration, supporting them as necessary, then they will
naturally engage with their world, explore, discover, and yes, learn. And that
is the essence of play.”
6. Despite the pressure,
try to give your child the space to grow and develop.
“Our
society is very pressured these days and very competitive. We have lots of
checklists, when did your child start to talk, run, does your four or five year
old know how to read yet. So we live in a competitive parenting time. For
example, maybe their child isn’t so interested in books right now, but it
doesn’t mean they’re not going to be uninterested forever. But parents get very
worried, so there’s a lot of them trying to teach children when all of the
scientific evidence shows that children learn by doing, exploring, by very
hands on play at the younger ages. But when we don’t give children room to do
it they literally can’t make choices for themselves. I think one of the core
things that comes out of play, maybe you’re in the park or the backyard, and
they might wonder ‘Do I want to go on this swing, do I want to kick a ball
around?’ all of that is decisions and choices which is the key to learning, but
also there’s this whole process of figuring out what to do.”
“This
may be why toddlers throw so much. It’s very powerful to be able to throw
something. They might think ‘Hey, I’ve got this thing in my hand, ooh I could
lunge it across the room!’ But as a parent you could say, ‘No you can’t throw
it everywhere but you can throw it here in this basket.’ Toddlers throw all the
time. They don’t have the impulse control, they’re testing gravity, and when
they yell it’s even more exciting, and they’re really trying to figure it all
out. What we call mistakes or failing some children do not see it that way. If
you watch a child build with Legos or wood blocks, they’ll build something and
even as it’s building and it falls down, there’s often even glee when it falls
down even if they’re frustrated, but then there’s a new decision point like
‘Oh, I could just walk away and do something else’ which is perfectly fine. But
parents worry about that all the time and think ‘Will he ever persist?’ Or they
might decide to rebuild it the same way or rebuild it a little differently. All
of that is learning. We worry so much in this competitive era about learning.
So they’re learning but also happy and excited and joyful. And that’s actually
what spurs learning through life. If you’re passionless, you can’t sit down and
do calculus if you don’t get any pleasure out of it and simply don’t care.”
7. Adjust your definition
of success, especially for your young child at this time.
Especially
for parents who are pretty well established and have done well in life, and
because we live in a hyperaware era with the internet and all the media outlets
that scare us, we worry. For example the media might tell us that if you’re
child’s not doing X by this age it could be sign of disaster. One thing is
there’s a deep lack of understanding that normal development is a very wide
band. I talk in my book about how the normal range of walking is between 10 and
17 months, but walking at 10 months doesn’t predict geniushood, and walking at
17 months doesn’t predict slowness in learning, it doesn’t map onto anything
else. But a parent of a 15 or 16 month old who isn’t yet walking is going to be
petrified in this era. Everybody has their way in the world, and if you take
that approach you see development as a kind of zig zagging pattern, but in this
era we tend to see it as a very straight line. First my child’s going to walk,
and then they’re going to run, and then they’re going to jump, and then they’re
going to be a basketball player. It doesn’t really work that way! One of the
things hyper competitiveness does is make children become more misunderstood.
For writing, some children learn very holistically. Other kids learn it very
piecemeal. One line, one line, another line. But they all learn it. So when you
get into the comparison of that child is doing something that my child’s not, I
think children feel very misunderstood. The toddler is trying to figure out the
world on their own terms, and what we’re doing as adults is saying that you
have to do it on our terms.”
“Success
to me is a person who feels confident to explore the world around him with
excitement and curiosity, who is not afraid to make mistakes, who feels secure
enough to begin to make friends, and who feels well-adjusted enough to bounce
back when she is disappointed. A person who can handle life is motivated to
learn, stands up for herself, and cares about others. That’s what I think
parents should work towards developing in their children.”
8. Realize that being a
parent of a young child is hard, and it’s okay to admit that.
“For
a study we conducted on the challenges of early parenting, often what parents
talk about is how the joys are so high—sharing in the joys of their
toddler—that when their child is happy and laughing it brings a joy to the
parent that is almost indescribable. But they also talk about becoming a parent
and those early years of parenting are so much harder than they ever could have
imagined. In this day and age of Facebook and social media being a parent is
made out to be this purely joyous endeavor, when in fact it is very difficult
and it puts a lot of strain on the marriage. So much of parenting is pretty
mundane and kind of dull and boring. So it’s okay and even healthy to admit
that and realize everyone is going through the same thing.”
9. Learn to let go: “This
will pass. Mine were like this once and now they are adults. Enjoy these years
all you can.”
“But
sometimes as a parent, you feel stuck. You are out in public. Your child melts
down. You brace yourself for the stares. The looks. The criticisms. What are
you to do?! I recall being on a very open promenade in California when my then
two-year-old threw a huge tantrum. He was sprawled on the ground, unmovable and
inconsolable, kicking and shrieking. All I could do is let him do it; I had
failed at all attempts to ward it off. A man was approaching us on the walk,
and I braced myself for some embarrassment or criticism from him about how bad
my child was (or what a terrible parent I was). Instead, as this stranger got
closer, he smiled and said, ‘This will pass. Mine were like this once and now
they are adults. Enjoy these years all you can.’”
© 2015 by Jonathan
Wai
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| Dr Jonathan Wai |
Dr.
Jonathan Wai Column: Finding the
Next Einstein Why Smart is Relative
Jonathan
Wai is a research scientist at the Duke University Talent Identification
Program and an expert on multiple issues surrounding the development of
intellectual and creative talent. He earned his doctorate in psychology
from Vanderbilt University where he taught at Peabody College. His
research and writing have been highlighted by venues such as the New York
Times, Science, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Wired, Forbes,
Financial Times, Scientific American, Education Week, and newspapers around the
world. His research—focused on the intersection of talent development,
intelligence, creativity, and education—has won multiple Mensa Awards for
Research Excellence.
Originally published in The Creativity Post
Originally published in The Creativity Post
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