Jamie Glowacki - Oh Crap! I Have a Toddler: Tackling These Crazy Awesome Years—No Time-outs Needed

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Also by Jamie Glowacki

Oh Crap! Potty Training

Gallery Books

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright 2019 by Jamie Glowacki

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition June 2019

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All names and many identifying details have been changed in the case histories discussed, and some individuals are composites.

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Cover design by Marlyn Dantes

Cover photography Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Glowacki, Jamie, author. Title: Oh crap! I have a toddler : tackling these crazy awesome yearsno time-outs needed / Jamie Glowacki. Description: New York : Gallery, [2019] Identifiers: LCCN 2018061341 | ISBN 9781982109738 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Toddlers. | Parenting. | Child rearing. Classification: LCC HQ774.5 .G56 2019 | DDC 306.874dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018061341

ISBN 978-1-9821-0973-8

ISBN 978-1-9821-0974-5 (ebook)

What to Say Instead of Be Careful by Jose Bergeron used with permission of Jose of Backwoodsmama.com.

This book is dedicated to Pascal, the most awesome kid a parent could ask for.

Seriously, hes the best.

He also ate a lifetime supply of cereal while this book was being written.

And thats okay.

And to any parent trying to make their parenting better.

I see you.

Thank you for allowing me into your lives to support you.

T oddlers, preschoolers, threenagers. Whatever we want to call this age, it is a tumultuous time. I like to call it psychotically awesome.

If you dont know me, Im Jamie and the author of the wildly popular potty training guide Oh Crap! Potty Training . Ive been a full-time potty trainer for over ten years. Which means that I work with this age group on the regular, with poop on top of personality. For real, literally.

Throughout my private practice, Ive found parents to be confused about both mental and physical development in the three, four, and five years. And Ive most definitely found that the sheer amount of information on the internet has muddled up parenting by a lot. I work with hundreds of families a year. Potty training doesnt exist in a vacuum. It exists right smack in the middle of toddler behavior. Over the years, Ive seen parents get farther and farther away from appropriate developmental expectations for this age range. My potty training consults soon morphed into general parenting. I found myself communicating with more doctors, occupational therapists, psychologists, and parenting colleagues, as we all try to shift this strange pendulum swing.

This preschooler age range is wildly misunderstood. Its such a crazy time of growth and brain development. But the most important aspect of this age range is individuation . Individuation is the psychological process in which your child individuates , or separates from you to become an individual. Prior to these years, your child really believes that you and he are one and the same person. If he bonks his head, he thinks you feel the pain. Children this young are completely enmeshed in you because they have to be. They cannot survive without you.

Then begins this process of individuation, when they start to realize Oh, hey! Look at this! Im MY OWN PERSON. And that brings the age of no . And all the attitude. And all the personality. And all the opinions. And ta-da! You got yourself a threenager. The term threenager has become popular vernacular for three going on thirteen, with all the attitude and seemingly psychotic mood shifts that are stereotypical of the hormonal teenage years. While some people feel this is a negative term, I like to think its not: teenagers and toddlers are both awesome. Both experience explosive growth, coupled with a developmental need to push against and away from you, and in this way theyre very similar. Just as for teenagers, toddlers development job right now is to pull away from you. Not because they dont love and need you but because they have to find themselves. I dont mean that in a hippy-dippy way of finding yourself. I mean they literally have to figure out who they are as a person, one who is separate from you. Which means a fair number of noes, the frequent cant-seem-to-choose, and, yes, the almighty power struggle.

But through it all, what we must remember is that this behavior is developmentally appropriate. Your childs own personality is emerging and there is something wildly wonderful about being part of this process. If, you know, you actually make it out alive, intact, and sane.

This blossoming personality makes this age awesome . But also slightly chaotic and more than just a little frustrating. To preschoolers the whole world is new. The whole idea that they are their own person is new. The fact that they have their own body and are starting to gain autonomy is new. So they seek control! Not only because it feels emotionally stabilizing, but because its totally fun to control their own body, mind, and spirit. And hell, while theyre at it, they may as well try to gain control of everything around them, including you!

This mission to gain control is not just about them being a pain in your butt. I mean, of course sometimes its a straight-up pain in the butt. But mostly this is their learning process. This is how theyll grow into their own awesomeness.

One of my favorite parenting people/experts/philosophers/whatever-you-want-to-call-them is Kim John Payne of Simplicity Parenting. He articulates something about parenting that Ive known intuitively, and does it in a beautiful way:

Zero to six years is governing.

Six to twelve years is gardening.

Twelve to eighteen years is guiding.

A few years back, I watched Payne give a talk at a local university. He was adamant that one of our main issues today is that too many parents have that order upside down. They are trying to guide in the zero to six years. I was all, Aha! Yessss! Thats exactly what I find in my own practice and my own community!