Children explore and play with objects; they also play with people.
They play with adults and with each other, though the classic research by Parten (1932) labeled toddlers as mainly playing parallel to each other rather than with each other. An example of paral- lel play as described and named by Parten is in the sandbox when two 2-year-olds sit side by side, each shoveling sand and talking, but not paying obvious attention to each other. It may seem as though each is living in his own world, but when you listen, you see that they are influenced by each other’s play. They may not interact, but one picks up on what the other is saying or doing and incorporates it into his own play. A short period of observation in a child care program shows that parallel play is not so common today among toddlers who have been in group care and are used to interacting with each other. It definitely wasn’t so at the Pikler Institute in Budapest, where groups of children spent their first three years together in residential care. Those children played
Watch this video to see some of the ways that infants and toddlers are supported in their environment. What do you see that supports literacy development?
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interactively as young toddlers and even as babies (Gonzalez-Mena, 2004). Chil- dren who are in stable group situations where they have peers in their daily lives go way beyond parallel play into true interaction. They talk to each other, carry- ing on a back-and-forth conversation (Wittmer, 2012).
Toddlers play with things. Anything within reach becomes a toy, as children reach out to learn about their world and the objects in it. They use all their
senses. It may not seem important to adults to know how things taste and to discover textures with their tongues. For babies and young toddlers, however, mouthing is a nat- ural way to learn about any object they can get their lips around. That’s why it is so im- portant that young children be in a safe environment where they won’t get hurt in their explorations. As they grow, their exploration of objects becomes more sophisticated, and they learn how things work and what they can do with them. In a consumer-ori- ented culture, many adults place a high priority on toys and see them as educational. Even newborns are given toys and encouraged to touch, look at, and hold them.
The typical child care program today relies on toys and other objects as part of its curriculum, and many programs have an abundance of things in their environments. These things may be recognizable, commercially manufactured toys, or they may be “found objects” such as margarine tubs, egg cartons, and lids from frozen orange juice containers. Art supplies and materials include such items as wood scraps from a car- penter shop and homemade play dough consisting of flour, water, and salt (for toddlers old enough to play with it and not eat it). Construction materials made for children are also usually present in early childhood programs and other toddler settings, includ- ing those used for therapy and for parent education, ranging from wooden blocks to plastic pieces that link together. Although not literally objects, sand and water are con- sidered educational materials in most programs. You might want to consider the mes- sages you give with your choice of toys. The temptation for many families is to shower their young children with toys. The marketing of toys often emphasizes their educa- tional value, but almost none of those claims have research behind them. Consider that found items and simple substances (such as sand and water—just mentioned) give children more opportunities to explore and interact with the play materials. If you work in a toddler setting, parents can learn from you, just by observing.
Play has roots in imitation. From birth babies imitate what they see. If someone sticks his tongue out, even a newborn baby is likely to do the same. The adult is usu- ally delighted at the baby’s response to almost anything he does, and so begins a give-and-take sequence of playful interaction. The socialization aspects of this kind of play are obvious. The child is learning to take turns, which will become useful later when the baby has enough language to take part in real conversations. At the begin- ning the “conversations” are nonverbal and playful.
At first babies only imitate when they can see what they are imitating. By about age two, the typically developing child has moved from imitating only things he sees to playing pretend in creative and imaginative ways. Jean Piaget (1954, 1962), a pio- neer in explaining cognitive development, had an explanation for the growing ability to pretend. The Swiss theorist and researcher explained that the shift occurs when children are able to make “internal representations” of things, actions, behaviors, and patterns. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development have guided several genera- tions of early childhood educators to understand more about how the intellect un- folds. The term internal representations means the child can hold images in her mind, and it is this ability that allows her to pretend. Using imagination, a block becomes a telephone and the child calls Daddy at work. Imaginary coffee comes out of toy coffee pots, and play dough rolled and molded becomes food. Although none of this
Watch this video to see two toddlers interact with each other and with toys. Notice how hard they are working on language to express their ideas.
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may look intellectual, it is indeed an aspect of cognitive development. It is also vitally connected to self-development and socialization. This may not be information that is important to pass on to parents, but it is good for early educators to have a grasp of the unfolding of play and an appreciation of the benefits.
In his book The Power of Play (2007), David Elkind, child development expert, makes a strong case for spontaneous, imaginative activities rather than passive elec- tronic entertainment and “educational” toys, games, and activities. He worries that free time and lazy periods of unstructured play are endangered species.
Encourage Self-Help Skills Encourage children to do for themselves what they are capable of; don’t do for them what they can do for themselves. This bit of advice comes from an author with a cultural priority on independence and may not apply to those from cultures who see early independence as a threat to interdependence. When independence is a prior- ity, teaching self-help skills as a way of empowerment starts in infancy as the adult includes the child as a full partner in caregiving routines. For instance, diapering is a teamwork affair, and the baby is treated as a whole person worthy of respect, not just as a bottom that must be tended to while the top half is being entertained with something else (Gerber, 1979).
This attitude of teamwork makes the toddler feel a little less rebellious because the adult is sometimes seen as a partner rather than as an adversary. It isn’t a cure- all for rebellion, of course, because the struggle to defy the adult is a mark of the toddler stage.
When children are old enough to eat solid foods, giving finger food allows them to practice getting food to their mouths, even if they still need to be spoon-fed. And before long they will want to take over completely. That means the adults have to put up with messy eating for a while until children develop the skills to eat neatly. Chil- dren can learn to dress themselves at an early age if encouraged to do so. The learn- ing process starts with undressing. Even a baby can pull off a sock that is sticking out from her toe. Setting it up so it is easy for her is encouraging self-help skills. Putting up with a less-than-perfect performance is also encouraging. Perfectionism on the part of the adult tends to discourage young children’s self-help skills. It may be hard to explain that to parents with perfectionist tendencies, but you can demonstrate it without making it a huge issue. Remember that modeling is a powerful teaching tool, with adults as well as with children.
Give Choices Help toddlers feel powerful by laying out options instead of giving a single direc- tive. Instead of saying, “Get in that bathtub now!” offer an alternative such as, “Do you want to take a bath before supper or after?” When after supper comes and the child still balks, you can say, “After you get in, you can choose between the boats or the blocks to play with.” And if the child still balks and it’s time for a showdown, you can still give a choice: “Do you want to climb in by yourself, or should I put you in?” This way the child still feels empowered, and you are able to do what you perceive he needs to do. You’re not being wishy-washy. The child will take a bath, but he has some choices about when, with what, and how he will enter the bathtub.
This is a culturally specific approach based on the concept of life as a series of choices. When you regard learning to make choices as important, you give children
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practice when they are young so that as they grow up they have had experience with making choices and living with the consequences. In cultures that don’t see life in this same way and don’t regard learning to make choices as important, giving tod- dlers choices doesn’t make as much sense.
Speaking of choices, a family-centered program also gives choices to families— what kind of support they need, what kinds of activities they want to engage in, and how they want to be involved are just some examples. Giving families choices is an important part of the Parent Services Project. Lee (2006) discusses the approach of family-centered care, which finds out what the families want rather than giving them what the program perceives they need. When teachers try to help by putting on pro- grams that are poorly attended by families, that’s a clue that those families were not included in the decision-making process. When parents decide for themselves what parent involvement means, the program has much more success. Parents can even run their own activities rather than having staff put them on for them. Some activi- ties can be a joint effort of staff and parents. One way to increase parent involvement is to offer a menu of services based on what families say they want and need. The Parent Services Project website is a good resource for ways to support families.
Provide Control Provide the control toddlers need. Here are two scenes that illustrate that princi- ple. Let’s go back to Olivia and Jacob, the two-year-olds. In this first scene the adult doesn’t provide control for Olivia. Watch what happens. Let’s call this adult A.
They are playing happily and the phone rings. The adult, A., turns her back to answer it, and Jacob grabs the toy Olivia has in her hand. Olivia, who hasn’t learned to express her feelings in words yet (though the adults have been work- ing on that) expresses her anger and frustration by sinking her sharp little baby teeth into Jacob’s arm. Jacob lets out a yell, and A. comes running. She scolds Olivia, telling her it isn’t nice to bite, then puts her in a time-out chair. Olivia keeps getting up, so A. continually puts her back, scolding her each time. Finally she hugs her, lets her up, and warns her not to bite again.
Later that afternoon, when Olivia is tired and a little lonely for her mother and A. is busy with another child, Olivia walks up to Jacob and bites his arm again. She remembers the stir it caused this morning, and she enjoys a repeat performance this afternoon. However, she feels vaguely uncomfortable because she knows that she should control that urge.
Contrast that scene with this one. This provider is called B.
Olivia and Jacob are playing together when the doorbell rings. B. knows that Olivia has the urge to bite when she gets frustrated, so rather than taking the chance of leaving her alone with Jacob for even a minute, she takes Olivia with her to open the door.
Later that morning, when Olivia and Jacob are playing together, Olivia gets frustrated. She makes a move toward Jacob’s arm; before she can connect, B.’s hand covers her mouth gently. “I know you are unhappy, but I won’t let you bite Jacob,” she says in a clear tone that doesn’t imply judgment—just fact. “You can bite this teething ring,” she adds, “or this plastic toy.” She offers the choice. Olivia grabs the teething ring and bites down hard. “You really are upset,” affirms B.
Adult B. wisely provides the control that Olivia lacks at this age. She prevents the biting from occurring instead of dealing with it afterward in a way that rewards Olivia
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with extra attention. She also redirects the energy so Olivia can still get her teeth into something, but it’s a teething ring instead of an arm.
Of course, it isn’t realistic to assume that an adult will be there 100 percent of the time. Even with careful vigilance, Olivia might get her teeth into Jacob sometime. If that were to happen, B. would then deal with the situation as a failure to control on her part—not as badness on Olivia’s part. After all, Olivia is using her mouth to express her feelings in the only way she knows how. She lacks control—the control that it’s up to the adult to provide.
If the bite occurs, B. responds in much the same way she responded over the toy- grabbing incident earlier in this chapter. She approaches both children, modeling gentleness by touching them both lightly and lovingly. She says, “That really hurts, Jacob.” To Olivia she says, “Jacob is unhappy because you hurt him.” As she says the words, she touches gently the red place on Jacob’s arm. Then she touches the same place on Olivia’s arm. After the demonstration of gentleness and the words indicat- ing the feelings, she deals with any first aid needed. She is careful not to give either child a great deal of the kind of extra attention that hooks children on either the vic- tim or the aggressor role. She doesn’t turn her back on Olivia and say, “Oh, poor little Jacob, let’s put some ice on that bite—poor baby,” because she knows that ignoring Olivia may make Jacob feel it’s worth it to get bitten in order to enjoy this lavish sym- pathy. And Olivia is not left with the uncomfortable feeling of being ignored while realizing that she doesn’t have the control she needs to keep from hurting someone. Being out of control is as scary for the child experiencing it as it is for the victim.
The adult B. approach provides excellent modeling for parents. It may require some explanation for parents to really understand what B. is doing and why. Of course, there isn’t always time to explain everything one does, but squeezing time in to talk to parents is an important part of the job.
Set Limits Think about how all the adult behaviors described in this section are aimed at so- cializing very young children to get along with others, learn to live in a group, and eventually become part of a larger community. Setting limits and enforcing them is part of this long-term process with the goal of good community members and productive citizens. Setting limits and enforcing them empowers children by giving them freedom within those limits. You can think of limits as a fence around a pas- ture. The horse is free to graze within the fence. Without the fence his freedom would have to be limited by a rope, by vigilance, or by training—none of which gives the freedom of the fence.
Limits for toddlers work the same way. The limits may be environmental bound- aries, such as a barricade across the stairs, a lock on the toilet lid, or a gate on the driveway. Or they may be human boundaries, such as consistently taking a child off a counter he insists on climbing up on, stopping a child from throwing toys, or holding a kicking child who threatens to hurt others.
Children will test limits until they find that they hold. The child locked out of the bathroom pounds on the door, jiggles the doorknob, and tries to poke some- thing into the keyhole. He gives up when the physical barrier holds. Human bound- aries are the same way. The child may continue to climb on the counter, and if the adult gives up and quits stopping him, he gets the message that this isn’t a real limit—it doesn’t hold if he’s persistent enough. If the child is allowed to throw toys sometimes, he doesn’t know there’s a limit. His test shows that it doesn’t hold up. It’s hard to have the patience to watch a child continually test the limits. It’s tempting
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to just give in—but that makes it worse the next time. It’s good for parents to watch how a toddler teacher handles setting limits. It is quite possible that, as children, many parents got a spanking when they pushed a limit; they may think that this is the only way to handle limit testing. With patience and skill, however, a professional can show them another way that eventually works. Notice that in this section and the previous one, alternatives to time out and spanking were demonstrated. Some family members have a limited repertoire when it comes to guiding behavior. Profes- sionals can open their eyes to a wider variety of approaches to take.
It also helps to understand that to empower a child and provide security at the same time, it is necessary to set limits and hold to them. Because toddlers are per- sistent and are still discovering things about the world, you can also expect those limits to be tested until the toddler is satisfied that they’re firm. The testing makes sense if you understand what’s going on. If you don’t, it seems as if the child is just trying to make you unhappy with his persistently unacceptable behavior. Don’t get unhappy—just outpersist him! Show parents what you are doing and explain if necessary.
Ashley and Emily Ashley is 17 and has an 18-month-old, Emily, who is driving her crazy. Ashley has just started in a young parent program that allows her to continue her high school educa- tion. Emily is taken care of at the school in a portable building that has been set up for infants and toddlers. Although Emily protests at being left in the morning, which really bothers Ashley, she quickly becomes contented while playing with the other toddlers. Ashley misses her, so she pops in briefly between her classes—which almost always results in another crying spell when she has to leave again. That annoys Ashley. Why can’t she just come and go without all this fuss!
Whenever she is around Emily, the child clings to her, making it impossible for her to even walk from one place to another. Ashley doesn’t like this.
Ashley also doesn’t like it when the child care teachers assure her that Emily was fine all day and didn’t miss her at all. That doesn’t feel good. And she doesn’t like the way Emily is beginning to hang around one of the teachers and even hugs her good-bye when they leave at the end of the day. Ashley wonders whether Emily still loves her when she shows affection toward the teacher.
Some of Emily’s other behaviors bother Ashley as well. She doesn’t like the defiant look Emily gets in her eye when Ashley tells her to do something. That makes Ashley feel angry, and she gets just as stubborn as Emily has become.
Sometimes she feels like hitting Emily, but she talks about that feeling in her parent- ing class, where she is learning a variety of ways to guide Emily’s behavior. Somehow talking about hitting helps her control herself, so she doesn’t do it. She’s seen another child in the center whose mother got carried away with spanking and ended up abus- ing her daughter. It was pretty awful, both how the child looked and what happened to her mother. She ended up losing her baby. Ashley couldn’t stand to lose Emily, and she cries at the thought that she might ever hurt her. So she is careful to never spank her, no matter what.
Another thing that bothers Ashley is how dirty Emily gets. She insists on do- ing things for herself—like feeding herself. She isn’t very neat! And the child care staff doesn’t seem to understand how important it is to Ashley that Emily look like a sweet
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little doll. They let her feed herself, which means that often her clothes get messed up. Sometimes Ashley comes in and finds Emily in the center’s old beat-up clothes, because they ran out of changes for her. Ashley doesn’t like seeing her like this.
And the sand! Can’t they understand how hard it is for Ashley when Emily gets sand in her hair? It seems that whenever they go out in the yard, Emily ends up with her head full of sand. It’s a lot of trouble to wash that out and redo her hair. Besides, Emily hates to have her hair washed and puts up quite a fight.
This is all so different from when Emily was younger and she used to just lie around and laugh and look cute. It was a lot easier then. But this is a different stage, and it isn’t so easy!
Ashley knew that none of this would be easy when she decided to keep Em- ily. She had lots of warnings about the life of a teen mother. But with her family’s support and the help of the center staff, she’s making it. And Emily is an impor- tant part of her life!