Child Development Toddler - How Toddlers Grow

Learning how to understand the constant change and help your child deal with it can be a challenge--perhaps the greatest challenge you will ever face. The study of preschool child development has advanced to a level that it demands a trained specialist to understand much of the original research and the conclusions being drawn. Fortunately there are ways to cope.

Child Development: Toddler

Whether you take parenting classes, buy the best parenting book, or cruise the libraries and bookstores looking for books by the very best interpreters of child development available, you can become well educated in the child development toddler and preschoolers demonstrate. You can learn the best methods for helping your child and your family through those changes.

Preschool child development is a time when children are learning about the world at stunning speed. But they have little deep understanding of what they learn, and no emotional understanding or integration of what they have learned. Using the system laid out by Erik Erikson, a pioneer in child development studies, a child between infancy and full school age goes through two entire developmental stages.

In the first, he or she develops a sense of self, and of self-will, complete with stubborn shouts of “No! No!” and persistent attempt to do what is forbidden. In later childhood the beginnings of imagination take wing, with magical thinking: a child of this age is full of "why" but not very good at knowing what to do with the answers to "why." Night fears, social exploration, guilt, and confusion are very real at this age, and imaginative play is a necessary mechanism for dealing with all this…and a delight in its own right.

A good parenting class, an excellent book on preschool child development (that lays out Erikson's theory in a way that is understandable for parents, not just professionals, a good article on childhood development: toddler behaviors will feel much less chaotic and uncontrollable when you know the nature of the child development patterns. By learning what you can expect, now and in years to come, you are preparing yourself to be the best parent you possibly can be.

Just as your child needs support to develop into a responsible adult, you need support to develop into a great parent. Taking the time and making the effort to learn about your child, and his growth and development gives you knowledge that will serve you every day. This is why a parenting book that details human development from birth to death is essential for every parent's library because it explains how children and parents grow.

Hundreds of people’s lives were changed and improved by the late Dr. Benjamin Spock. The current new parent advisors, blessed with decades more child cognitive study to draw from, can serve the same purpose, educating you in preschool child development and preparing you for the great adventure of later parenting a school kid!

Copyright© 2009 by Laura Ramirez. All rights reserved. This article may not be copied or reproduced in any way without the permission of the author.

New! Comments