Parent struggles to identify ‘normal’ behavior for toddler
Adapted from an online discussion. Dear Carolyn: I’m really struggling with my almost-2-year-old right now, just knowing what is developmentally normal behavior and how to manage discipline for hitting, biting, food throwing, hunger strikes, etc. Do you have a good book recommendation?
— Struggling
I recommend Harvey Karp’s “Happiest Baby” books.
“How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk” (Faber and Mazlish) was my go-to for posttoddler kids, and now there’s a “... So Little Kids Will Listen” spinoff.
Try the Parent Encouragement Program, too. pepparent.org
Re: Toddler Resources: I found the “Aha! Parenting” blog helpful (www. ahaparenting.com). Healthychildren .org is the American Academy of Pediatrics resource and it has a great Ages and Stages section.
That said, I do wish we’d extricate ourselves from the “normal” word. My friends who had kids before me ended up with these perfect, obedient kids. I had a wild thing, and I spent three years in hell wondering why my kid wasn’t like all the other kids. Then my friends had second kids and now we have a wild child support group, of sorts.
It turned out I wasn’t just improperly reproducing; having kids who display so-called “normal” behavior is a crapshoot. And some of the older, perfect/obedient kids are turning out to be ... less so. Life, eh.
I will say this, though: I wish I could redo those three years of worry and see the world through his eyes instead of through my judgy, is-he-normal eyes.
— Anonymous
To be clear, normal is not a behavior, it’s a range of behaviors, with room for obedient kids and wild children. Good references will cover general capacity to understand a rule, grasp the wider world, feel self-conscious, etc. These in turn can help parents adjust their expectations to minimize the child’s and parent’s frustration. An understanding of a developmental range of normal can be the difference between setting kids up to succeed and setting them up to fail.
You are so very right, however, that different kids will have wildly different personalities and develop at wildly different paces.