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During this phase, your child may seem distant from you; she may even answer back and defy you. Don’t take this personally. This phase will soon pass. The child is just in the “do it myself” phase and needs some space and coaching (including correcting) from the sidelines. One day soon, as sure as sunrise follows nightfall, you’ll find your child snuggling next to you on the couch asking for help with tasks, suggesting activities you can do together. You may even wake up one morning and discover your six-year-old nestled next to you in bed. This child is now in a reconnecting phase, a pit stop in the developmental journey when your child needs emotional refuelling. Take advantage of this intermission. It’s time to patch up breaks in communication, cement your relationship, and recharge your child and yourself for the next unsettled phase.
When parents and child are out of harmony, discipline problems multiply. If your child is trying to break away when you are trying to bond, you are likely to overreact to what may be normal behaviours of independence. If you are too busy while your child is in the reconnecting phase, you miss a window of opportunity to strengthen your positions as comforter, adviser, authority figure, and disciplinarian.
Respect negative phases
When your child is developmentally negative don’t take it personally. This is hard sometimes because life does have to go on. This is why a project such as toilet training should not be undertaken during a negative phase. To do so would just frustrate you and give your child more to say no about. Another way to respect negativity is not to punish behaviour that a child is developmentally incapable of (such as saying “yes” during a negative phase). Use non-punitive methods of directing developmental negativity. Above all, do not punish for any aspects of toilet learning. As with food discipline, it’s your child’s body. Trust him to learn its natural functions.
Plan ahead
Discipline problems are likely to occur when a child is making the transition from one developmental stage to another, or during major family changes: a move, a new sibling, family illness, or so on. I recently counselled a family whose previously sweet child had turned sour. The mother had started a new job, and at the same time the child started a new school. If possible, time major changes in your life for when a child is not going through major changes herself.
What is “normal” may not be acceptable
“I don’t care what the book says, Bobby and Jimmy, fighting is not going to be normal in our home”, said a mother who knew her tolerance. Part of discipline is learning how to live with a child through different developmental stages, and the child’s learning how to live with you. A child’s early family experience is like boot camp in preparing for life. A child must learn how to get along with family members in preparation for future social relationships. He needs to be adaptable, to learn to adjust his behaviours to a particular family need. Billy is boisterous by temperament. Yet Billy is expected to play quietly for a few days because mummy is recovering from an illness and has a headache. It is healthy for the child to learn that the sun rises and sets on other people beside himself. Children must learn to adapt to house rules to prepare them to adjust to society’s rules.
Disciplining in a developmentally correct way does not mean becoming lax. While it is necessary to tailor your discipline to the temperament and stage of your child, widen your acceptance when the going gets tough, there is no excuse for not expecting and helping your child to obey. It is easy to pass off behaviour by saying “He’s just going through a stage” or “That’s just part of his temperament”, yet it’s important to keep a balance between the child’s need to develop and the family’s need for well-being.
channelling toddler behaviours
Paying attention to your toddler’s emotional needs and understanding his developmental level are the first steps in disciplining a toddler. Once you realize how and why toddlers act the way they do, it will be easier for you to tolerate behaviour you shouldn’t change and change the behaviour you shouldn’t tolerate.
When your baby learns to walk he officially becomes a toddler. This and other developmental milestones, mental and motor, bring a new set of challenges. Your role as disciplinarian expands from simple nurturing to providing a safe environment in which your toddler can explore and learn. Have realistic expectations for normal toddler behaviour: toddlers are curious, driven, strong-minded. They need these qualities to learn, to persist, to bounce back in spite of life’s little setbacks, to get up and try again. Toddlers also begin to think of themselves as individuals separate from Mummy. This is both exciting and frightening: The toddler is ready to shed the restrictions of being a baby but not ready to leave behind the security.
The lessons an attachment-parented baby learns during his first year help him cope with the ambivalence of toddlerhood. Because he is used to feeling right he is less likely to get himself into situations that make him feel wrong. Because he enters toddlerhood trusting in himself and in his caregivers, there is a balance in what he does and how he acts. There is a purpose to his actions that make him fascinating to watch. The attachment mother reads her child like a book and anticipates what will happen on the next page. She will learn specific ways to channel her toddler’s behaviour.
Offer redirectors. A baby’s mind is filled with hundreds of word associations. One pattern of association we noted in Matthew’s developmental diary was that when I would say, ÉC;Go” to sixteen–month–old Matthew he would get the baby sling and run to the door.
distract and divert
Your one-year-old is toddling toward the lamp cord. Instead of scooping him up and risking a protest tantrum, first get his attention by calling his name or some other cue word that you have learned will stop him in his tracks long enough to distract him pleasantly. Then, quickly divert him toward a safer alternative. For example, when Lauren was younger (and it still works now sometimes), as soon as she would head for mischief we’d call out “Lauren!” Hearing her name took her by surprise and caused her to momentarily forget her objective. She’d respond “Yeah?” Once we had her attention, we’d quickly redirect her interests before she’d invested a lot of emotional energy into her original plan.
“Go” to sixteen-month-old Matthew he would get the baby sling and run to the door. We used this ability to associate for distraction discipline: When we saw Matthew headed for major mischief we’d say, “Go.” This cue was enough to motivate his mind and body to change direction. We filed away a list of cue words to use as “redirectors” (“ball”, “cat”, “go”, and so on). Of course, you must carry through and go for a walk or play ball or find the cat; otherwise your child will come to distrust you and you will lose a useful discipline tool. Toddlers from fourteen to eighteen months need lots of energetic catering to. Past eighteen months you can start saying things like “Not now. Maybe later.” (See other discussions of redirectors and here.)
Our strong-willed Lauren, at seventeen months of age, was stubbornly bent on going into the next room and finding her mother, who was trying to write. As I put out my arm to stop her she angrily pushed it away and began to throw a tantrum. I conveyed to her that she must stay with me, but I decided to make a game of it. Instead of physically restraining her, I let her play with my arm while using it to keep her from getting by. This turned into a “Give Me Five” game; and then, as she used her hand to push my arm away, I would take her hand and show her how to stroke my whiskers and she would laugh about it. Soon Lauren forgot her strong desire to go into the other room, deciding it was fun to stay and play with daddy. It took time and extra effort to distract Lauren, but it saved a lot of wear and tear on both of us. Instead of getting into an unpleasant father-daughter power struggle, I was able actually to improve our relationship. The stronger the will of the child, the more creatively a parent has to work at steering the child into good behaviour.