Toddler Development PDF

CHAPTER SEVEN: TODDLERS (15 MONTHS TO 3 YEARS) After completing Chapter Seven students will be able to: Discuss physical development and growth in toddlerhood Describe the importance of play Summarize Piaget’s theory of toddler development Describe how tod...

CHAPTER SEVEN: TODDLERS (15 MONTHS TO 3 YEARS) After completing Chapter Seven students will be able to: Discuss physical development and growth in toddlerhood Describe the importance of play Summarize Piaget’s theory of toddler development Describe how toddlers learn and remember Discuss specific safety concerns for toddlers Describe the nature of language and how it develops in toddlerhood Discuss emotional and personality development in toddlerhood Explain how social contexts influence the toddler’s social and emotional development A child’s first birthday is a big celebration! Beyond the cake, this moment should also be savored as the calm before the storm. Once a child turns one, if they are not walking already, the child will soon be walking and then running! This is the year of independence as a child develops autonomy-a sense of self. Autonomy in early childhood means letting children know that they have control over themselves and the choices that they make. With the new independence that walking brings, there is also a tumultuous ambivalence that can be challenging for those in a child’s life. Temper tantrums emerge because of this ambivalence. Although exhausting for parents and caregivers, the life of a toddler also brings excitement and joy as they watch their rapid development and growth over the next couple of years. Welcome to toddlerhood! Media Attributions One year old toddler © Photo by TiAchen Aier on Unsplash is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license Chapter Seven: Toddlers (15 Months to 3 Years) | 125 126 | Chapter Seven: Toddlers (15 Months to 3 Years) Physical Development for Toddlers By age one, an infant heading into toddlerhood is typically triple their birth weight and on average, between 28 and 32 inches. By age two, the weight has quadrupled. This makes the average two-year-old between 20 and 40 pounds. Boys reach about 50 percent and girls 53 percent of their adult height by age two (Santrock, 2013). Genetic factors play a major role in determining a child’s growth pattern, especially for height and to a lesser extent for weight. Generally, tall parents have children who are tall and short parents have children who are short. The conditions in which children are raised also influence growth patterns. Children who do not receive adequate nutrition during their early years do not achieve optimal height. They are also at risk for developmental delays and other health concerns due to the lack of adequate nutrients needed to sustain physical growth and brain development. Physically, a toddler at 18 months (about 1 and a half years) is walking and even running. They are able to pull toys while walking. Toddlers can help undress themselves, drink from a cup, and start to eat with a spoon. They are climbing stairs with assistance. Bowel and Bladder Control During the first year of life, infants do not have control over the muscles involved in elimination. They also lack awareness of the physical signs that signal the need for elimination. It is not until the middle of the second year when children may begin to make the connection between the feelings of impending elimination and their outcome. At the end of the second year or the beginning of the third year the potential for toilet training emerges. Control over bowel movements is usually accomplished earlier than bladder control. When to begin toilet training is a serious concern for many parents. It is important to remember that there is a wide range of individual differences when children will be trained and when they are physically and emotionally ready for this milestone in development. Most children learn to control their bladders and bowels when they are ready, just as they learned to sit and walk. Starting to train a child before he or she is ready can potentially lengthen the process and lead to emotional distress for both the child and parents/caregivers. Only four percent of children are potty trained by age two. One of the key signs of developmental readiness is if a child stays dry for at least two hours. They also need to have the ability to walk independently and remove clothing necessary to use the potty. Approximately 60 percent of children are trained by age three. Only approximately 2 percent are not trained by age four. Girls are generally able to meet this developmental milestone earlier than boys (Berk, 2017). Physical Development for Toddlers | 127 Safety Concerns It is very important to make sure that toddlers, just like infants, are supervised at all times. Toddlers are at risk for many types of accidents including falling down stairs, drowning, and getting hit by cars if they wander off. Parents need to make sure that their homes are toddler-proofed. Electrical outlets need to be covered. Hazardous materials such as chemicals and household cleaners need to be stored out of reach and ideally locked up out of harm’s way. Medication needs to be made inaccessible as well as access to any firearms that a family may own. Toddlers are fast. They also have Houdini-like skills when it comes to escape and getting into things that they shouldn’t have access to. As a toddler learns to walk, they will also begin the art of climbing. If the child is still sleeping in a crib, mattresses should be at their lowest setting and monitored closely because the toddler will soon learn to climb out of cribs and playpens. Caution near water is another area of concern. Toddlers can drown in as little as an inch of water. Children under age five have the highest risk of drowning, with death rates of nearly 3 per 100,000 in 2010 according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Swimming pools are the most common place where children under five drown each year. Car seat safety is also of critical importance. Car Seat Safety Car seat safety is of utmost importance. Many toddlers spend a considerable amount of time in a motor vehicle. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, 2018), white children are more likely to be buckled up than black or Hispanic children. From 2001 to 2010, approximately 1 in 5 child passenger deaths in the United States involved drunk driving. Sixty-five percent of the time it was the child’s own driver that had been drinking (CDC, 2018). Restraint use among young children often depends upon the driver’s seat belt use. Almost 40% of children riding with unbelted drivers were themselves unrestrained. Child restraint systems are often used incorrectly. An estimated 46% of car and booster seats (59% of car seats and 20% of booster seats) are misused in a way that could reduce their effectiveness (CDC, 2018). Children should remain in rear-facing car seats until age 2 or when they reach the upper weight or height limit of that seat (CDC, 2018). All children 2 years old, or those younger than 2 years old who have outgrown the rear-facing weight or height limit for their car seat, should use a forward-facing car seat with a harness for as long as possible, up to the highest weight or height allowed by the manufacturer of their child safety seat (CDC, 2018). Car seat installation should be completed by a trained professional. Many local police and fire stations offer this service free of charge to help ensure that car seats are installed properly. Proper car seat installation significantly helps protect a child in the event of a motor vehicle accident. Immunizations Today, most children in the United States lead much healthier lives and parents live with much less anxiety and worry over infections during childhood. Immunizations are one of the success stories of modern medicine. Parents often wonder if vaccinations are worth putting their young child through the distress of receiving vaccinations or the potential side effects. The answer from the vast majority of medical experts is a resounding “yes.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend that healthy children get vaccinated against 14 diseases by age 2 (with boosters later for some), 128 | Physical Development for Toddlers along with an annual inoculation against the flu. The government supports vaccines so strongly that any uninsured child can walk into a clinic and get his or her shots for free. Despite doctors’ reassurances and mounting evidence that underscores the safety and value of vaccination, many educated, dedicated parents are still wary of vaccines or strongly opposed to them. Although the national immunization rate has remained stable over the past decade (76 percent of children ages 19 to 35 months were up to date on all of their shots in 2008), that’s still short of the government’s goal of 80 percent. In some parts of the United States, a rising number of parents are delaying shots for their children or skipping certain ones altogether, citing religious or philosophical exemptions from state laws that require children to be vaccinated in order to attend school. As a result, there have been recent outbreaks of serious diseases that vaccines had virtually wiped out in the U.S., including measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), and haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), which was once the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in children under 5 (CDC, 2023). What scares parents most about inoculations is that there are some who believe that their child’s autism was caused by immunizations. Some believe that the increased number of vaccines are to blame for the rise in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The idea first made headlines in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield, M.D., a British gastroenterologist, published a study of 12 children in The Lancet that linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) combination vaccine with intestinal problems that he believed led to autism. The following year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a warning about thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative that was found in most vaccines. Though it didn’t mention autism specifically, it suggested that the use of vaccines with thimerosal could theoretically push an infant’s total exposure of mercury, a neurotoxin, above safe limits, and it recommended that the preservative be removed from shots. The vaccine-autism hypothesis was solidly in the mainstream by the time actress Jenny McCarthy went public with her belief that vaccines caused her son’s autism, describing in heartbreaking detail how “the soul left his eyes” on a 2007 segment of the The Oprah Show. Caregivers can rest assured, however, since at least seven large studies in major medical journals have now found no association between the MMR vaccine and ASD and The Lancet officially retracted Dr. Wakefield’s original paper. In March, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Office of Special Masters, a group of judges appointed to handle cases of families who believe immunizations were responsible for their child’s autism, ruled that thimerosal in vaccines does not increase the risk of the disorder. Several demographic analyses have also found that autism rates continued to rise even after thimerosal was removed from all vaccines except some flu shots (AAP, 2018). Any association of ASD characteristics emergence with the timing of vaccines is almost certainly coincidental. Children get their first dose of the MMR vaccine at 12 to 15 months, the age at which autism symptoms typically become noticeable. Some autism activists now believe that we shouldn’t even be performing more studies about a possible vaccine connection because they take attention and money away from important research that is investigating other potential causes of the disorder which has reached alarming numbers in the past decade. Media Attributions Finger painting © Ana Klipper via. Unsplash is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license Physical Development for Toddlers | 129 Cognitive Development for Toddlers Did you know that 80% of a child’s brain develops by the age of three years old? It is during these early years of development that a child’s brain begins to develop memory, language, thinking, and reasoning skills. They learn by imitating the behavior of others, especially adults and older children. It can also be a challenging time as children begin to show defiant behavior and set out to explore the world around them. During the toddler years, a child’s ability to play pretend emerges. At 18 months, it is a simple ability, such as feeding a doll. By the end of this period (3 years), a child’s ability to pretend play has become much more elaborate. As stated in chapter two, Erikson’s psychosocial theory has eight stages. Erikson claims that human motivation is social. During the first year of life, infants experience trust vs. mistrust. Erikson stated that this was the most important stage in development. If infants learn to trust their caregivers, they will feel confident to explore their world independently. During the second stage, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, ages 1 to 3, toddlers and young preschoolers want to be independent. You often hear them saying, “Me do it.” They get frustrated and may feel shame and doubt when they are unsuccessful. It is important to provide them with opportunities to accomplish tasks independently–for example, providing small pitchers so they can pour their own milk and clothing that they can put on independently. According to Piaget, toddlers remain in the sensorimotor stage of development through approximately 24 months or two years of age. From 12 to 18 months, toddlers become creative problem solvers. For the first time, they are able to apply entirely new strategies to solve problems rather than simply using combinations of previously used schemes. Their creativity during this stage stems from their use of tertiary circular reactions, in which toddlers make subtle modifications in their behavior so as to explore the effects of those modifications. The ability to utilize tertiary circular reactions provides toddlers with the means to learn from their actions (Piaget, 1955). The final stage of the sensorimotor period involves the emergence of symbolic representation and the use of mental symbols to represent objects. Toddlers develop the ability to imagine the acts of a sequence of events to discover the outcome. This is the emergence of their problem-solving abilities, which will continue to develop throughout childhood. Joint attention between caregiver and child is critical during the toddler phase of development. It facilitates cognitive development through a sharing of focus, allowing the toddler to learn how to interpret and understand interactions with others. Caregivers who are sensitive and responsive to a child’s needs and focus with the child on a shared task assist the child in their cognitive development. First Sentences: Language Development in Toddlerhood Between 12 and 18 months, toddlers add about three words per month to their vocabularies. After 18 to 24 months, a vocabulary explosion often takes place, which adds a multitude of words at a rapid rate of acquisition. At about 18 months, many children begin to produce sequences of words. They are usually separated by long pauses. By the end of the second year, these sequences give way to true sentences. Toddlers shift from using holophrases (single-word utterances that convey as much meaning as a whole sentence) to actual sentences with multiple words strung together. This shift is one of the tremendous accomplishments of the toddler years. 130 | Cognitive Development for Toddlers Social and Emotional Development for Toddlers At 18 months, a toddler has met many developmental milestones. In the social/emotional domain, they like to hand things to others and will often point to show others something of interest to them. A child at 18 months may be afraid of strangers, shows affection to familiar people, and explores alone but still prefers a parent or caregiver close by. They may cling to caregivers in new situations. Temper tantrums are a normal part of toddler development. Saying and shaking one’s head “no” is common during the toddler stage. At 18 months, a child has several single words that they can say. Their vocabulary will expand rapidly over the next several years. Biting Biting is a very common behavior among toddlers. It brings a source of stress to parents and caregivers alike in trying to determine what is causing the biting behavior. Children bite in order to cope with a challenge or fulfill a need. For example, a child may be biting to express a strong feeling (like frustration), to communicate a need for personal space (maybe another child is standing too close), or to satisfy a need for oral stimulation. Trying to understand the underlying cause of the biting will help develop an effective response (zerotothree.org). There are many reasons why toddlers might bite. The following list includes some of the most common reasons, with the most common being a lack of language skills necessary for expressing important needs or strong feelings like anger, frustration, or joy. Biting is a substitute for the messages toddlers can’t yet express in words, such as “I am so mad at you,” “You are standing too close to me,” “I am really excited,” or “I want to play with you.” Biting could also be the result of : Being overwhelmed by the sounds, light, or activity level in this setting Experimentation to see what will happen The need for more active playtime Being over-tired Teething Having a need for oral stimulation Helping to understand the reasons a child is biting will help caregivers develop a plan to address the underlying needs the child has that are not being met (Crain, 2011). Hitting/Scratching and Temper Tantrums Most toddlers get aggressive sometimes. Tantrums and aggressive behaviors such as hitting, kicking, scratching, and biting are all behaviors that are exhibited by children at some point during this phase of development. An aggressive young child, at least up to the age of three, is not being ‘bad’ or disobedient. The child is trying Social and Emotional Development for Toddlers | 131 to communicate and hasn’t yet developed the language skills or emotional habits to express themselves more effectively. Another possibility is that the child does not feel that they are being heard, and violence is the only way to get their caregiver’s attention. Toddler aggression usually happens when a little one is not getting what they want, whether that want is reasonable (food, attention, a cuddle), or not (candy, someone else’s toy, something dangerous). Context matters. Quite predictably, toddlers are more likely to be aggressive when they’re tired, worried, not feeling well, hungry, or otherwise stressed. The caregiver can help remedy a difficult situation by looking at it from the toddler’s point of view. Hitting, scratching, and temper tantrums are the reactions that often express the powerlessness of being a toddler (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/going-beyond-intelligence/201701/toddler-tantrums-hitting- kicking-scratching-and-biting) Toddler Property Laws Author Unknown The following list of “Toddler Property Laws” sums up the joy and challenges of toddler development. There are several versions, and the original author is unknown. 1. If I like it, it’s mine. 2. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine. 3. If I can take it from you, it’s mine. 4. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine. 5. If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way. 6. If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine. 7. If it looks like it’s mine, it’s mine. 8. If I saw it first, it’s mine. 9. If I can see it, it’s mine. 10. If I think it’s mine, it’s mine. 11. If I want it, it’s mine. 12. If I “need it, it’s mine (yes, I know the difference between “want” and “need”!). 13. If I say it’s mine, it’s mine. 14. If you don’t stop me from playing with it, it’s mine. 15. If you tell me I can play with it, it’s mine. 16. If it will upset me too much when you take it away from me, it’s mine. 17. If I (think I) can play with it better than you can, it’s mine. 18. If I play with it long enough, it’s mine. 19. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it’s mine. 132 | Social and Emotional Development for Toddlers  20. If it’s broken, it’s yours (no, wait, all the pieces are mine). 2-3 Year Milestones Are the terrible twos a universal experience? Contrary to the experience of many Western parents, the “terrible twos” is not a universal phenomenon. In fact, it is much less dramatic and even completely absent in some cultures. The Aka in central Africa, for example, have a culture in which infants are doted on and held by both mother and father and then transition easily to playing alone or with siblings, peers, and others in their villages. Behaviors such as playing with machetes and spears are not only tolerated but often encouraged. Similarly, research into Guatemalan mothering practices found that if there was a situation where an older sibling or older peer had a desired toy that the toddler wanted, the Guatemalan mother insisted that the toy be given over to the toddler. Although this may be seen as overly indulgent by standards in the United States, the terrible twos are not an experienced phenomenon in this culture. The Guatemalan mothers’ approach seems to be more reflective of cultural values of collectivism and interdependence. It is interesting to think about whether the experience of tantrums in two-year-olds in American culture reflects a cultural emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, autonomy, and independence (Jackson, 2011) URL: https://pathways.org/growth-development/toddler/milestones/ Social and Emotional Development for Toddlers | 133 134 | Social and Emotional Development for Toddlers