Thomas - Brilliantly Behaved Toddler

Lorraine Thomas

New York London

2014 by Lorraine Thomas

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Becoming a mum or a dad is a life-changing experience. Its the most rewarding and challenging job youll ever do in your life, and definitely the most important, because your input now will affect your toddlers ongoing approach to life.

Children come with no instructions and while its possible to parent perfectly well without help from other people, sometimes its possible to feel stuck or unsure about how best to deal with toddlers, who can present a wide-ranging set of challenges! So weve put together the best up-to-date advice and practical tips to help you handle your toddlers tantrums, nurture their wellbeing and have fun.

As a parent you hold your childs hand for a short time, but their heart forever. This means that your influence is enormous everything you say and do is being absorbed by your little one as a demonstration of how to do things, from getting dressed in a particular order to dealing with arguments successfully. At the same time, your toddler is also beginning to assert his independence for the first time, and will behave in ways that you might find very challenging.

Thats where this book comes in. It will help you see the world through your toddlers eyes and understand what makes him behave in the way that he does, which will go a long way towards helping you deal empathically with him in any situation. We suggest lots of simple, practical tools to help you deal positively with difficult behaviour, many of which can solve the trickiest of problems in just a few minutes a day.

If you have ever felt that your toddler, not you, controls family life, this book will put you back in the driving seat and enable you to enjoy being the kind of parent you want to be.

Being a parent is the most important job youll ever do and the most challenging. Every parent knows just how stressful it can be when your toddler screams and shouts to get his own way and you end up doing the same. His behaviour and yours is, however, perfectly normal.

Its normal for a toddler to throw a wobbly and flex his muscles. Its a natural part of his growing up and your development as a parent. Whats interesting is that the majority of mums and dads have tantrums at one time or another too. In the parenting workshops that I regularly run, around nine out of ten parents admit to shouting at their children, saying things they later regret and feeling guilty. Most say that they lose their temper when their toddler is throwing a tantrum in public or in the evenings when they find it most difficult to stay calm themselves. This is because when were feeling tired and under pressure, we have far less patience and little things can bring out the worst in us, meaning that small incidents can escalate into major wars.

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Yelling. Throwing toys. Stamping. Thats me, not them! #guiltymum

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This demonstrates how the key to having a brilliantly behaved toddler is having a brilliantly behaved parent. You are and always will be your childs most powerful role model and every day is an opportunity for you to make a real difference in his life. But remember too that youre only human. So when youre setting expectations around standards of behaviour, make sure you dont set the bar so high that you make it easy for yourself to fail, which will then lead to you feeling guilty. Theres no such thing as the perfect child or parent!

Parenting sometimes feels like mountaineering its exhausting, relentless, and occasionally youll stumble. So reach out for help from your fellow climbers; their support can make all the difference.

Holding up a mirror

Your behaviour is the most important factor in teaching your toddler how to behave. He holds up a mirror to you. Take a close look into it and youll see that both the things you love about your childs behaviour and the things you find most challenging have their roots in you. So while you cant wave a magic wand over your child and change his behaviour, you can begin today to make changes in the way that you behave and in the way that you respond to him. Changing your behaviour will bring about positive changes in your toddlers behaviour too. If you are a calm and positive parent who rises to challenges, youre likely to have a child who behaves like that too.

Youre in charge

You probably feel that your toddler knows just what to say or do to make you lose your cool. He knows which buttons to press you may be determined not to react in a particular way, but somehow he seems to know how to make you act like that despite your good intentions. Its at times like this that parents sense that their toddler is in the driving seat and has somehow gained control. Your toddler throws a tantrum and you react to it, without having time to think about whats happening in the heat of the moment. Whats happening here is that you have fallen into the trap of acting your toddlers age, instead of your own, and effectively there are now two toddlers having a tantrum!

It is easy to be calm, in control and positive when things are going well in family life, but its much harder when you are tired or stressed or your child is being particularly challenging. The first step to being calmer is to believe you can do it. If you think you can, you will. If you think you cant youll be absolutely right about that too. It isnt easy. It takes real strength, energy and commitment to decide to stay calm in stressful situations. Like lots of things about being a parent, this skill isnt learned in an instant; you may have to work at it on a daily basis. But the more you practise, the easier it becomes.