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Toddlers on the Move
Giving Children Freedom to Explore While Ensuring Safety
By Melinda Copp
Exploring the home environment is an important process in every child's learning curve. Reaching, touching, grasping, holding, throwing and watching things fall, then picking them up to test their reality is all part of this exploration process, Dr. Goldstein says. At the same time, language development begins, and the child associates the objects he touches, handles and recognizes with the words he learns to say.
"Physically manipulating objects is your child's brain integrating the world into its cognitive processes," Dr. Goldstein says. "It is learning through the use of the physical (both gross motor and fine motor) and sensory (touch and feel) exploration."
The toddler stage is rife with internal struggles. Toddlers don't usually have much control over what they eat for lunch, what they wear and their activities for the day, so they try desperately to assert their independence over whatever they can, hence the "terrible twos." But at the same time, exploration and independence can be a little scary for tots.
"At this stage in development, kids are trying to balance autonomy and independence," says Dr. Jenn Berman, a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of The A to Z Guide to Raising Happy, Confident Kids (New World Library, 2007). "Most kids are eager to explore, but they can be scared by suddenly being on their own, too."