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What's on Your Toddler's Mind. A Roadmap to Toddler Thinking and Behavior

by Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D.Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, 
University of California at San Diego 

(Copyright 4/12/12)

       Wouldn’t it be useful to know how infants and toddlers differ mentally from adults and how your experience during the first few years of life affects your experience as an adult? What’s on Your Toddler’s Mind.  A Roadmap to Toddler Thinking and Behavior provides answers to those questions. Fascinating aspects of infant development, such as how an infant comes to develop a sense of self are addressed. Toddlers are eternally fascinating and frustrating. This ebook explains the causes, and developmental benefits, of the two-year-old’s messiness, negativism, motor restlessness and boundless energy, behaviors that tend to drive parents crazy.

    With humor and understanding Calvin Colarusso M.D. , child psychiatrist,  brings his fifty years of experience of helping parents of infants and toddlers maximize their child’s developmental potential and enjoy the heck out of the experience.

   Think of this book as a fascinating source of knowledge of early child development that is filled with examples of situations that every parent of infants and toddlers experiences and suggestions for how to manage them. And as a bonus, learn something about yourself!

            What’s on Your Toddler’s Mind.  A Roadmap to Toddler Thinking and Behavior  includes the following:

     A definition of development

     A description of the developmental phases of the life cycle

     The emergence of a sense of self

     The absolutely essential role of good-enough parenting

     Sexual identity formation

     The effect of parental absences on early development

     Toilet training

     The role of frustration and gratification

     The importance of caring, nurturing breast and bottle feeding 

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Introduction
How can we understand the amazing changes that take place so rapidly in infants and toddlers during the first few years of life—and in their parents who raise them? The best way is to understand the fascinating subject of human development. In other words, how do babies, who are programmed from birth, indeed, from the nine months in utero, become healthy, productive adults as they pass through infancy, childhood, and adolescence? Even though adults don’t have accurate memories of these early years, their experiences in the first few years of life lay the foundation for what they become as adults, and consciously and unconsciously influence the way they raise their infants and toddlers. So, with this awareness in mind, let’s begin to understand with a definition of development.

Development may be defined as the emergence and evolution of the human mind from birth until death as the result of the constant interplay of biological, psychological, and environmental influences. This definition suggests several critically important ideas. First, development, which focuses on the study of the mind, is not synonymous with growth and physical aging; these are terms that refer to the changes that occur in the body over time. However, mental development is profoundly influenced by the body. Conversely, neither is development the study of the effect of environment alone. Environment refers to all external influences, particularly the interaction with other human beings. Both biological and environmental influences must be understood within the context of the third factor in this confluence of forces that shape the developmental process: namely, the mind itself, as it exists at a particular point in the life cycle, be it one of relatively immaturity in infancy and early childhood or one of sophistication and complexity in midlife. Thus, in attempting to understand mental functioning at any age, we must consider biological, environmental, and intra-psychic influences as they exist at that moment in time.

 
The lifelong course of development has been broken down into blocks of time called developmental phases. One of the most commonly used divisions is as follows:

 

     First Phase          Infancy and toddlerhood     Ages 0-3

     Second Phase     Preschool years                      Ages 3-6

     Third Phase        Elementary school years     Ages 6-12

     Fourth Phase      Adolescence                            Ages 12-20

     Fifth Phase          Young adulthood                   Ages 20-40

     Sixth Phase         Middle Adulthood                  Ages 40-65

     Seventh Phase    Late Adulthood                      Ages 65-85

     Eighth Phase     Late, Late Adulthood             Ages 85 and beyond

    

These artificially determined divisions are organized around basic themes and issues that are specific for any particular phase, called developmental tasks. Engagement and mastery of each of the tasks at the appropriate time strengthens and expands mental capabilities and provides the tools needed to engage the next set of developmental tasks—and so it goes, throughout life. Later in this book we will focus on the developmental tasks of the first three years of life.

  So what do parents need in order to facilitate the developmental processes in their very young child? A modicum of maturity, which is a reference to a mental state, not an age, would certainly help. Webster suggests that maturity refers to “complete and finished in natural growth or development. . .the state or quality of being fully grown.” A developmental definition of maturity contains some of the same elements. Maturity refers to that mental state found in healthy adults, which is characterized by a detailed knowledge of the parameters of human existence; a sophisticated level of self-awareness based on an honest appraisal of one’s own experience within those basic parameters; and the ability to use this intellectual and emotional knowledge and insight caringly in relationship to one’s self and others. In regard to child rearing, to use your knowledge of early child development and an understanding of your own developmental experience as a child and adult to treat your infant and toddler with the utmost in understanding, love and empathy; thus facilitating, to the maximum degree possible, his or her course through the critically important first few years of life.

 SOME GENERAL CONCEPTS

 The Importance of Childhood Experience: All roads to happiness and fulfillment in adulthood begin in childhood. Some are as smooth as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, others are as rough as a pothole-scarred street. Most individuals experience some of both as they traverse childhood and adolescence. Indeed, it is the enormous variety of human experience that adds texture to the broad expanses of daily living and sparkle and uniqueness to the individual personality.

 Misconceptions about Childhood: Prior to the twentieth century, children were thought of as miniature adults, physically smaller and asexual but mentally the same as adults. Over the centuries this misconception became the rational for the misunderstanding and maltreatment of children. We now understand that children are qualitatively different than adults. Indeed, infants and toddlers are very different from older children and adolescents. Understanding those differences, and how and when they become apparent, is essential knowledge for raising children. 

The Importance of Mothering: As strange as it may seem today, because the idea is so completely accepted, the importance of the mother-child relationship for normal infant and early child development was not fully recognized before the 1940s and the 1950s. Then psychoanalyst Rene Spitz’s work on “hospitalism” revolutionized contemporary thought. In orphanages and foundling homes around the world he was shocked to find row after row of listless, hollow-eyes infants. Although fed and clothed, they received little stimulation and love from their starchly-dressed nurses. They spent nearly all of their time lying in their cribs, clean and dressed but nearly always alone. Doomed by the ignorance of their well-intentioned caregivers, they failed to develop and many died before they were a year old. In startling contrast were the happy babies cared for on a continuous basis by their unwed mothers who were relegated to institutions because of their disreputable status.

After fleeing to England in the 1930s with her famous father to escape Nazi persecution, Anna Freud studied the effects of trauma and separation on children who were caught in the London blitz. Those who remained with their parents, huddled night after night in the cramped, womb-like security of the subways, were less affected by the traumatic situation than those who were sent away to the physically safe but emotionally barren countryside.

Children are Different at Different Ages: Children differ at different ages because mind and body evolve so rapidly in childhood. This seemingly simplistic idea has far-reaching consequences for understanding children because it suggests that similar behaviors have different meanings at different ages. The ubiquitous temper tantrums of the two-year-old are normal, but the unbridled thrashing about of a six-year-old is not. The terrified response of a four-year-old (to a frightening nightmare) is an age-appropriate response to an intense struggle with feelings of anger and competition, but the presence of frequent nightmares in a ten-year-old is a likely indication of pathology. 

The Length of Childhood vs. Adulthood: At first glance, nature’s division of life into childhood and adulthood appears capricious and inequitable, since we have but twenty years in which to crowd the experiences of childhood, but three times as long to struggle with the great issues of adulthood. However, a more studied consideration suggests that the temporal distribution may be just right. The passion of youth must recede before the unhurried contemplation of adulthood and the human condition can begin.

 Parenthood: The Power of the Potter’s Wheel: When they are very young, children are amorphous and unformed, responsive to the touch of their parents, who shape and mold them like wet clay. But as time passes and the clay hardens, children become less malleable but still responsive to the potter’s wheel. Once fired in the kiln of adolescence, the artist’s influence diminishes, reduced to the role of connoisseur admiring his or her creation.

Parents are nature’s substitutes for the instincts that provide newborns in the animal kingdom with the survival skills needed to evade predators. Human infants are not so equipped; they do not survive in life’s jungle without caretakers. 

Marilyn and Bob decided to go out to dinner. It was a warm summer evening, and they thought that an hour in the park with some Subway sandwiches sounded just great. They bounded down the steps of their second floor apartment and were about to get in the car when Bob said, “Oh my god, we forgot about Jim!” Jim was their one-month-old first-born, who was asleep upstairs in his crib. With great embarrassment they bounded up the stairs and assumed the mantel of their new roles. 

Healthy parents recognize their awesome power and exercise it judiciously, remaining steadfast and firm when necessary. Then gradually, joyfully, they relinquish control to the toddler’s messy demand to feed him or herself, to the seven-year-old’s insistence on bathing in private while undoubtedly forgetting to wash behind the ears, and to the impetuous adolescent who wants it all—now! After all, active parenthood is meant to be a time-limited activity. The successful practitioner of the art is out of business when the young ones reach eighteen or so, but not out of the role of parent. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, the relationship between parent and child continues. Their lives remain tightly intertwined as they march through the second half of life, anxiously anticipating the arrival of the next generation, who will assign them the new roles of parents and grandparents and further transform their lives. 

 The Egocentricity of Childhood: During infancy, mother is not perceived by the child as having an existence of her own. Rather, she is an extension of the child’s needs and wishes, the source of satisfaction and frustration. Every preoccupation of the mother—her concerns with other family members, with work or outside interests, illnesses and absences, even her death—is transformed into an experience of rejection and desertion. This means that the infant and toddler must misinterpret the actions of significant adults. Under normal circumstances, these repeated inevitable slights are compensated for by innumerable interactions of assurance and pleasure.

As parents help the young child engage in the developmental tasks of early life such as weaning and toilet training, and accept the frustrations involved therein, the child gradually develops the capacity to control raging wants and desires. Then, too, as intellect develops, the toddler begins to understand that he or she is not the center of the universe and that all actions that frustrate wishes are not intentional. Slowly, ever so slowly, as adulthood approaches, the egocentricity of childhood is partially transformed into enlightened self-interest and a growing concern for others. But as muted as infantile egocentricity may be in the mature adult, it is never totally absent, instead constantly lurking beneath a face of civility, ready to reassert itself at a weak moment’s notice. The mature person recognizes, accepts, and occasionally befriends the beast within, thus satisfying the wish to be special.
Five-year-old Rebecca knew that mother had to take care of her two-year-old brother but she certainly didn’t like it. “You like Ralph more than me."

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