Your Toddler: Solving Problems and Forming a Sense of Self



Probably more happens during the first half of your baby's second year of life than at any other time, yet typically it is the most overlooked period of her development. Many parents eagerly greet their baby's first kisses and hugs and later on celebrate their toddler's lisping phrases and sentences, yet inadvertently miss a less flamboyant, but equally impressive, developmental achievement that's underway.

Your two-way communicator, who by this time may already enjoy playing peekaboo and funny-face games, is now starting to figure out how to solve problems. She's learning, for example, how to scrunch her face into a silly expression to get your attention when she's in the mood for some fun. She knows how to turn in your direction while motioning toward the refrigerator, urging you to fetch some juice. She may utter a string of pleading sounds that summon you to the playroom, and point toward a toy that's too high up on the shelf for her to reach by herself.

Your child is becoming a problem solver in many areas of her life. She now has ways to get what she wants (a bottle of juice or hard-to-reach toys), to figure out how the physical world works (and pinpoint where Mommy is when she's in an adjacent room, or where a toy is when it's hidden under the rug), and to have fun, too. She is starting to demonstrate an original sense of humor! As the two of you exchange silly hats and put them on each other's heads, she may suddenly pluck one off your head and put it on her foot. Although she's never seen you do this before, your little girl may chuckle with delight because she's come up with a new angle on where to wear her hat. Your child is becoming aware that all of her different needs, interests, original behaviors, and the various parts of her body are merging into an integrated "me," or whole person. A true sense of self is starting to form.

We'll be discussing how your budding problem solver is mastering all kinds of emotional and intellectual lessons during this stage of her development. You may not have focused on these other emerging abilities because during her first year of life you've probably been preoccupied with your baby's happiness, as you should be. You surely were captivated by her ability to share hugs, kisses, and funny faces with you. When she eventually utters a few words, it is such a thrilling achievement that it is easy to overlook the fact that your baby is already communicating in complex ways and figuring out how things fit together in terms of patterns. She is mastering a type of preverbal communication and learning that will provide an essential foundation for her words, thoughts, intelligence, and social skills.

Because so many positive things ranging from scientific problem solving to developing a more cohesive sense of self-normally unfold during these months, their failure to emerge is the first detectable sign of many types of problems. Through our research and clinical observations of many toddlers' behaviors during this stage, we're now able to identify children with severe language problems, learning disabilities, and autistic-type symptoms long before we could expect them to try to use spoken words with any fluency. For instance, we have found that an 18-month-old toddler's inability to take engage in complex problem solving say, to take someone by the hand and walk him or her to the refrigerator in search of a favorite food or to the toy chest to hunt for a favorite plaything can be a warning signal. Thankfully, though, most toddlers exhibit a wealth of problem-solving behaviors. Their drive to explore the world keeps them on the go all day.

Most parents share their baby's intense excitement as she achieves the physical milestone of walking, usually sometime between 9 and 18 months. In fact, few sights are more endearing than watching a toddler take her bowlegged first few steps! However, in our excitement over the child's new ability to walk, we sometimes disregard an equally impressive developmental achievement that's also afoot. Our toddlers can walk meaningfully toward and away from things, and can take objects with them, too. Even before learning how to walk, your baby is busy figuring out how to get something she wants, or how to maneuver herself so she can see something interesting.

An ability to solve problems rests on the even more basic skill of seeing and deciphering patterns. It is the ability to understand patterns that lets a toddler know that if she takes two steps here and two steps there she'll be able to reach her favorite toy. She becomes a successful navigator not only because her muscles are coordinated, but also because her growing brain now enables her to understand patterns. Toddlers learn to recognize how one room leads to another, and where you are in relation to them. They can meaningfully explore the world long before they are able to express their wishes and thoughts in words.

Because your toddler is becoming a pattern recognizer, she is learning more about how the physical world works, too. For instance, if she presses a series of two or three buttons that make a toy pop up, or turns a knob one or two extra times to make the volume of a music box increase, she is becoming familiar with some of the infinite number of complicated patterns that exist in physical space. She can understand, for example, how to get to an object that seems out of reach by pulling a chair over and climbing up. She is developing a sense of how close or far things are from her, and thus getting a feel for distance. In fact, you may notice that your child may be quick to get an object that's only one or two steps away, but pout and expect you to be the "gofer" if the object is clear across the room.

Your toddler's growing appreciation for physical space also helps her in her emotional relationship with you. At 12 months of age, your child not only wants to see where you are, she wants to smell you and touch you, too. She needs to physically cling to you in order to feel a sense of closeness. However, by the time she's 18 months old, your loving looks can make her feel as secure as if she were sitting in your lap. She feels this way because she can figure out the pattern of your smiling glances and feel approved of, even from afar. Her own periodic glances back in your direction and attention to the sound of your voice further help her to feel warm and supported. Although she may not comprehend the exact meaning of your words, she is able to decode the upbeat, admiring pattern of the sounds you utter. "What an a-maaaa-zing block tower you've built!" will reassure her that your engagement with her is holding steady from across the room.

Your toddler is obviously not yet able to count the actual number of steps that lie between the two of you, but she has an intuitive sense that you could be at her side in a jiffy. She develops a kind of road map in her mind of where she is in relation to you. Even when she looks away from you for a while, or gets distracted by something else in the room, she knows where you are in space and gets a great deal of reassurance from that knowledge.

In this way, an 18-month-old can have her cake and eat it too. She can experience the excitement of relative independence as she wanders away from you, all the while being soothed by the balm of your loving facial expressions and the supportive tone of your voice. The apparent tension between a toddler's wish to explore (and thus become somewhat independent) and her equal need for the comforts of dependency is something that puzzled many child observers for years. Margaret Mahler, one of the early and most important pioneers in observing infants and toddlers and attempting to figure out what was going on inside their minds, thought that a toddler's need to do such things as move away from her parent's side to explore was at odds with her equally compelling need to hold on to Mommy or Daddy.

Our own research has led us to a very different insight into what has been thought to be one of life's major dilemmas: the conflict between security and dependence, and exploration and independence. The toddler's awareness of patterns, and her ability to see and hear her involved, loving parents across space, supplies her with a portable emotional security blanket that permits her to confidently explore the outer world. She is able to remain wrapped up in the warmth of a parent's love, even from afar. The child's growing ability to create complex patterns therefore provides a solution to this dilemma. Of course, her caregivers need to be engaged and involved in these emotional signals across space to enable this process to occur in an optimal way.

Later on, the child's ability to create inner ideas or images will allow her to carry an image or idea of Mom or Dad inside her head, even when they are out of sight. This makes her emotional security blanket even more portable. As she continues to mature in the years ahead, that inner sense of warmth and security will expand into the kind of feeling that adults experience when they are separated from a loved one. For example, when your spouse is away on a business trip, you may be able to kindle the warmth of your shared relationship in your heart. Even though he or she may be three thousand miles away and you may have to wait until nightfall to hear the sound of his or her voice over the phone, you are able to rely on inner feelings and images that emotionally link the two of you.

Toddlers with visual, hearing, or listening difficulties obviously have extra challenges when it comes to creating their own long-distance security blankets. Like all children this age, they must develop a sustaining, portable sense of security before they can confidently explore their world. Since they may have one less sensory channel to confidently and fully rely on, their task is more difficult, but often very achievable nonetheless.

For instance, a baby who can't hear would have a stronger need to remain in visual contact with her parents as she begins to roam. Mom and Dad could make a concerted effort to make their friendly waves or approving smiles especially vivid to their toddler, even at a distance. They could even make a point of coming over to her from time to time and offering a quick hug or peck on the cheek to reassure their toddler that her explorations won't isolate her from them. A baby who can't see would benefit from hearing lots of encouraging words and vocalizations, as well as touches and smells. In fact, we often recommend interesting games that enable babies who can't see to locate people and objects by touch and sounds, as well as smells. In that way, they can create a sensory road map of their home even though they can't see. The important sense of space and spatial relationships that we all need to feel secure and to navigate can be formed from many of our senses, and not just our vision.

Now let's take a closer look at the remarkable feats of problem solving that may be shown by your child. For instance, when she spies a favorite toy up high on a shelf she may enlist your aid in getting her "lovely" by exchanging a whole range of gestures with you chat logically follow each other. Perhaps she'll scoot over to the toy shelves, stop, and look over her shoulder at you. You could give her a nod and a wink and say, "I bet I know what you want!" Watch her spin around, pointing her chubby finger up at the top shelf, grunting with excitement. If you say, "That's it, right?" she'll probably catch your drift and stretch out both her arms toward the stuffed animal she yearns for. You'll reward her efforts by putting the toy in her arms, and will no doubt receive a big smile in return.
Dialogues such as this reveal just how skilled your little girl may be becoming at communicating her intentions to you and solving problems. These skills had their roots in the simple back-and-forth exchanges that she shared with you just a few short months ago. Back then, your baby sensed that her smile could cause you to break out in a smile, too. Her sweet coos elicited loving murmurs from you in return. She slowly became aware that you and she were separate beings, and that her behavior could influence yours.

Now, however, your toddler is more aware of bigger patterns not just spatial patterns, but also patterns of cause and effect and expectable sequences. She can envision not just a single kiss, or smile, or murmur, but a whole sequence of back-and-forth hugs, kisses, embraces, and eager expressions which may equal the pattern "warm and cuddly Mommy" in her mind. These abilities to recognize and create patterns and use them to problem-solve enable her to become more fully aware of the power of her smiles. She knows that smiling at you, and smiling at your spouse, and smiling at her grandma, and smiling at the grocery store clerk all produce smiles in return.

Because she can recognize patterns, your little girl comes to know you as "Mommy who mostly smiles at me except when I run away from her" and "Daddy who likes to cuddle with me and tickle me with his scratchy whiskers except when he yells at Mommy." Your child is starting to connect her desires and wishes to strategies involving the use of her muscles and gestures ("If I look in Mommy's direction, point and grunt, and let her see I need her help, maybe she can help me reach my lovely"). She can string together a chain of separate acts as she communicates with you, in an attempt to get what she wants. This ability to sequence many actions into a pattern (also called motor planning) is helping her feel increasingly assertive. She's busy figuring out patterns of behavior that lead to getting the toys she wants, eating the foods she craves, or receiving the hugs and kisses from you that make her feel secure and loved. She no longer has to rely on your educated guesses about her wishes; she can now enlist your aid to reach her goals.

In a miraculously brief period of time, your child has gone from being a baby just learning the meaning of a smile to devising 10-, 20-, and 30-step "action plans" that enlist your help in getting what she wants. Her ability to use a whole range of nonverbal gestures crawling or walking, pointing, grabbing, vocalizing, and climbing has become so polished that she's able to string them together in truly effective ways.

When her throat feels dry and she wants some juice to drink, for example, your little girl can now lead you, step by step, toward the refrigerator instead of woefully crying or tugging on your sleeve in an aimless way. As she bangs on the door with her hand, and you open it in response, she may squeal with excitement while pointing to a juice box. All these linked actions are driven by your child's strong desires, cooperative muscles, and ability to organize her behavior.

As your toddler communicates with you in these increasingly complex (though still nonverbal) ways, she's starting to know what emotional or social patterns to expect from you. For example, she's beginning to notice which of her actions win hugs and kisses from you, and which ones are met by your angry voice or sagging shoulders. When your or your spouse comes home from work with a playful look in your eye and a lilt in your voice, your daughter recognizes that she's seen this happy sequence of behaviors before and can anticipate some fun. She may mischievously lug your briefcase down the hall, giggling to herself because she knows an exciting game of catch-me-if-you-can will follow. On the other hand, if your mouth is usually set in a grim line when you come in the door, and you collapse on the sofa with a groan of exhaustion, your daughter will instead come to recognize a different pattern of behavior that may lead her to shy away from you.

All of these new emotional and social expectations lead to the dawning of a new sense of self. The "I'm a good sender of hugs and kisses" and the "I'm great at getting Daddy to smile" and the "I'm a clinger-to-Mommy when Daddy gets mad and his voice is scary" pieces of her budding self are all coalescing into a sense of "me." She is forming a clearer definition of self based on how you react to her overtures.

Your child is also developing a sense of what to expect from others. If Mommy and Daddy are basically warm and loving, a toddler begins to count on other people being emotionally receptive and available, too. If, on the other hand, a child's parents are usually distracted or aloof, she may come to feel that other people are similarly uninterested in her, or she may develop a countertendency, such as clinging, to make sure that others remain close to her. At this age, a child isn't yet able to think "Oh, I wish Daddy (or Mommy) were more available," or feel as if she's emotionally shortchanged. It is simply a commonplace fact to her that Daddy (or Mommy) will meet her needs only some of the time. This becomes part of the way she sees the world. Many fundamental adult character traits arise out of the expectations or lack of them that toddlers develop during this period.

Meanwhile, you're now getting a clearer fix on your toddler's special style. Is she typically a daredevil, or does she struggle to be independent Does she cling to you, finding a sense of comfort and security only while in your arms Is she showing a pattern of assertiveness, or a quiet sort of gentleness Does she have a short fuse and ignite into anger and protest easily Is she a born flirt, or a wisenheimer

All of life's basic emotional themes dependency, assertiveness, negotiating closeness, anger, curiosity, the need to explore, pleasure, dealing with limit setting and frustration are emerging now. One of your key tasks during the coming months will be actively to assist your toddler in putting together increasingly complex chains of interaction that help her explore not only her physical surroundings but also her innermost feelings. In fact, during these months you'll be functioning somewhat like a teacher of elaborate charades, but the rules of this game allow for the use of vocalizations and words as well. With your help, your child will learn to use a whole range of gestures and words in a logically consistent way to communicate her feelings, wishes, and needs. She may pick up information from your visual gestures, from the pattern and tone of your voice, and from many other features of your communication. Her own behavior will communicate whole messages rather than simple commands or requests, as they did when she was seven months old. Instead of merely raising her arms to convey the idea that she wants to go out, your 17-month-old may well march to the closet door, turn the doorknob, yank the stroller out, look in your direction, and vocalize. As you read and respond to the sounds she utters and to her body English, you will be helping her use her muscles and senses to convey complicated ideas.

In just a few short months from now, your little girl will expand her use of spoken words, relying on phrases and sentences as a kind of shorthand when she wants to express her desires. She will be able to do this because she has already had the experience of successfully communicating her needs and wishes to you. By the time she is about two years old, she will know that when she says, "Love you," the words sum up all the flirtatious behavior and feelings she's shared with you, including hugs, kisses, winsome looks, and fond pats. Your toddler will eventually understand what an abstract term like "love" means because she has experienced not just words, but a whole pattern of behavior that is a part of love. She has come to recognize that other actions mean "love," too, like when you help her recover from frustration, or remain by her side even when she's angry. Your child knows all about anger, warmth, affection, frustration, curiosity, and assertiveness because you've been interacting with her around these feelings. Thus, a concept is first understood through doing, and then the words become a label for what is already known. Your toddler knows what love feels like at the level of her skin and muscles, in the very core of her body.

What to Look For at This Stage

As we've indicated, over a period of 6 to 8 months or so, your toddler's behaviors are becoming increasingly complex. A 16-month-old, for example, may start up a dialogue by first looking at you and then reaching her arm out toward the toy shelf (opening a circle of communication). You might cock your head to one side, point to a cow puppet on the shelf, and ask, "This one?" Your baby will likely respond, and thereby close the circle of communication she opened, by nodding her head or reaching with both hands for the puppet. She may explore the cow puppet further and chew on the velvety fabric, rub the black and white cowhide design, or try and wedge her fingers inside the puppet. Perhaps you'll offer to help her put the puppet over her hand, or pick up a nearby sheep puppet. The two of you might playfully exchange animal sounds, with your "baa'"s and her "moo"'s eventually dissolving into giggles and a shared tickle or two. After a while she may reach for another puppet, bounce up and down, and make whimpering sounds. You might try imitating her behavior, rocking and whimpering in rhythm with her own vocalizations. She may in turn copy the tone of your voice, or the way you sway to and fro. If your stamina is holding up, you might start crawling on all fours to see if your play partner and her puppet follow suit.
By this point you have exchanged dozens of gestures with your toddler. She has gone from opening and closing just a few circles of communication to perhaps 30 in one sequence, and that's a reassuring sign that she's moving ahead just as she should during this stage of her development. These long sequences of back-and-forth gesturing reflect your toddler's growing ability to organize her own behavior into patterns and to recognize another person's patterns, too.

When a child doesn't seem to be engaging in more and more complicated gestural interactions as the toddler months progress, it can be an indication that a fuller evaluation is needed. Communication or motor problems, or social or emotional challenges can at times interfere with learning how to use gestures to solve problems. Check with your pediatrician if you don't notice a significant lengthening and broadening of your gestural interactions with your child by the time she is about 18 months old.

As your toddler interacts with you in increasingly complex ways, she may energetically use a wide variety of gestures, including the following:

Interactive social games involving humor and cooperation, as well as defiance

Back-and-forth vocalizations, and even words, by the end of this developmental stage

Back-and-forth emotional exchanges that include animated facial expressions

Back-and-forth touches

Interactive movements in space (rough-and-tumble play)

Interactive motor patterns (give-and-take, chase, search, climbing, and imitative games)

Communication across space (also referred to as distal communication) which grows out of early proximal communication using touch, holding, and the like.

By the end of this stage, most babies can remain in voice or visual contact with their caregivers for brief periods of time, even though they aren't in physical proximity. For instance, a 16-month-old may happily bang on pots and pans in the kitchen and vocalize to her mother, who is working nearby in the family room. As the mother chatters in reply, the baby responds by vocalizing and playing, without immediately needing to come over and see or touch her mother. She is able to close the circle of communication she has opened from afar. This ability to remain in touch long-distance, or in distal communication, is one of the hallmarks of most toddlers' behavior by the time they are 18 months old.

Imitative Play

As your toddler becomes adept at imitating your behaviors, she is showing you that she can make a connection between things that she hears and sees you do and things that she does. She is now able to take in complex patterns of behavior, copy them, and organize her responses. You may find yourself chuckling as you see her pick up her play telephone and angrily slam the receiver down in a perfect duplication of your own actions the night before, when the third phone solicitor interrupted your dinner. Imitation is a great help for a child learning new social patterns, motor activities, and sounds, and eventually will be of great help in learning words. You can encourage imitation in many different ways. For example, when your child approaches a door and starts banging on it as if to say, "Open up!" you might try turning the doorknob and seeing if the child will attempt to copy your gesture and actually turn the knob herself. If your child is physically unable to turn the doorknob, you could make a twisting motion with your hand while standing away from the door, to convey the meaning of "Open!" Once she succeeds in copying your gesture, you could then see if both of you could open the door together as you say, "Let's open the door, okay?" In this way, imitation can be part of routine, purposeful, complex communications between the two of you. If you also play copycat games together in which your toddler touches her nose when you touch your own, or reaches for the sky when you do, she'll have fan and get pleasure out of behaving just like Mommy or Daddy.

Dancing or jumping with your child can also have a lot of meaning. If you turn on the radio and jump and dance, your toddler may be joyfully absorbed in the fun of acting just like you. To be like Mommy and Daddy (touching noses, reaching for the sky, and dancing to the pulsing sounds of the radio), and to experience great pleasure while doing so, is as important as being able to execute more formal copycat behaviors.

Sometimes, though, it's hard to get imitation started with children who have trouble organizing their motor responses. They may see that your wrists swivel, or your arms reach for the sky, but they can't quite copy the motions. You can certainly empathize with their difficulty when you remember how long it first took you to copy a golf swing, adjust your tennis serve, or do the macarena! For some people, seeing a complex gesture just once is all it takes for them to successfully copy it. Others need the gesture broken down into ten smaller steps, and even then copying it is difficult.

Similarly, some toddlers will readily repeat sounds, while others have a harder time of it. Because it's easy to avoid doing something that's difficult and then give up, such children may move away from you or ignore you as you try to teach them more complex behavior. The best way to get them excited about practicing complex motor patterns of any kind is to start with patterns that they can already do.

Let's say that your child is a good runner. Try to have your first copycat games involve a lot of running back and forth. If she wants to go to the door, suggest that you run there together. If you've noticed that your child likes to raise her arms above her head and make high-pitched sounds at the same time, make this your first imitative game. As we said before, always build on your child's strengths. Take the actions that she already spontaneously performs and bring them under her purposeful control by making them part of an exciting imitation game.

Imitative behavior is extremely important during this period of your toddler's development because imitation allows a child to take shortcuts as she masters complex patterns of behavior. She can learn a lot of things very quickly by simply copying whole patterns, rather than having to learn how to do many small steps in sequence. Usually this ability increases in the second year of life, and reaches a crescendo between 14 and 18 months.

How Imitative Behavior Conveys Emotions

Before too long, your toddler may put on your favorite straw hat, grab your purse, and toddle around the house with a big grin on her face, clearly waiting for your delighted laugh. She has recognized a grown-up pattern of behavior and reproduced it, confident that she will reap a sense of pleasure from your admiring face. This is how your child begins to explore emotional themes of her own choosing. Now she doesn't always have to passively wait for you to dole out happy feelings; she can organize her actions in a way that's likely to prompt a satisfying response from you.

When she feels a need for closeness, for example, she will approach you with her arms outstretched, seeking a hug, or stroke your hair the way she has seen your spouse caress it. When you hug her back, and feel her back muscles relax into the curve of your embrace, a circle of communication in which your child successfully requested and received some loving has been closed.

Similarly, you may observe your child handling anger and distress in patterns of behavior that seem embarrassingly familiar. She may very well bellow at you, try to slam a door, and scoot away in a perfect imitation of your behavior toward your spouse five minutes before. Although initially she may just be copying some of your emotional behavior in a monkey-see, monkey-do manner, soon she will start initiating some of these patterns when she has to let off steam. The important thing to note is that your toddler can now use these learned patterns of behavior to express all her feelings. As you help her string together these new behavioral patterns, she will increasingly create her own twists. She may be able to experience and organize interactions around the following kinds of emotions:

Pleasure and Excitement

When you and your toddler play together with a new toy, or share a joke as she gets dressed up in your hat and shoes, she will use her ability to link gestures to bring herself pleasure. She'll try to catch your eye to share in her delight, and your response will probably lead to further exchanges.

Assertiveness

When you and your baby companionably explore the house, she experiences a can-do feeling of growing independence. Initially the two of you may do your investigating side by side, but by the time she is about 18 months old, your child will be able to explore more independently. She probably knows the layout of the familiar regions of your house by heart now. She may go into a far corner of a room to push the buttons on the VCR the way you do, while periodically vocalizing or looking over her shoulder in your direction.

Another way in which you'll see evidence of your child's new ability to imitate and recreate "action plans" is her fascination with blocks and large puzzle pieces. She is driven to explore how things relate to each other, or fit together. Just as she now may able to coordinate her large muscles and navigate across all the rooms in the house and still find her way back to you, she is also gaining control over her fine muscles, and can use her fingers to manipulate blocks and create patterns she has perceived. For example, after watching you do it, your baby will probably try and place two, three, or even more blocks in a tower. She is gradually learning how to sequence her behaviors, and learning that one block rests on another.

At 14 months your toddler might pick up a triangle block and try to fit it into all the various holes of her shape-sorter box until one works. Amazingly, your child is already showing evidence of scientific thinking! She is a pattern recognizer who keeps looking for the solution to a problem (which hole will accommodate the triangular block). She may also demonstrate her prowess at using both large and small muscles in a coordinated effort to swipe a tempting gingerbread man off a platter that's placed on a kitchen counter. Your little cookie monster may plan a concerted assault that includes dragging a chair over to the cabinet, pulling herself up on the counter, reaching toward the plate, and nabbing the treat. She has just given you another clear sign that she's becoming a master problem solver.

Closeness

Your toddler enjoys affection and will offer you wet, drooly kisses and hugs when she feels a need to be close. She will become progressively more coy and charming as she learns to incorporate flirtatious patterns of behavior she has gleaned from watching you into her own repertoire. Through imitation, she'll develop a whole range of facial gestures from widening her eyes with excitement to teasing glances that will wrap you around her little finger.

Anger

Initially your toddler will simply wave her arms in agitation, frown, or bark angrily back at you when she's feeling angry. Soon, she'll use more organized sequences or imitate a pattern to deal with distress by pounding her hands on the floor and yelling after you've just yelled at her. By the end of this stage of her development, she may be able to organize her angry feelings in numerous ways. She may deliberately bite or pinch, throw toys, fling herself on the ground, cry hysterically, or even give you the cold shoulder. She may combine a variety of imitative and novel behavior frowning, growling, pinching, and running away?in an escalating display of rage. You'll have a real prima donna on your hands!

A Wide Range of New Capacities

Another way in which your child now shows you that she's able to organize her behavior is the delightful sense of originality she unexpectedly displays. As her growing gestural vocabulary offers her more complex ways of expressing herself, she can show you that she's a creative thinker who doesn't have to do things precisely the way she's seen you do them. Suddenly you may become aware that she's got her own view of things. You may be lying in the floor next to your little playmate, building a block tower, when she takes a square block and tries to balance it on your head, laughing. She knows that blocks aren't really hats, and has come up with a joke she wants to share with you. As you giggle in response, and put a block "hat" on her head, the two of you are beginning to play your first game of "let's pretend" together.
Your toddler is showing you that she not only has a creative sense of humor, but that she's beginning to understand that objects have functions. A block is a hard shape we use to build towers; a hat is a floppy piece of fabric that sits on your head. It's fun for a toddler to willfully mix up the proper functions of objects. Not only does your child's playful joke let you know that she can put an original spin on things, it also reveals that she is developing a functional understanding of an object's use. She will eventually apply this understanding to more and more aspects of her world, and will become more of a logical, scientific thinker.

This originality is another sign of your toddler's distinct personality. She is using her new ability to put together whole patterns of behavior to express her emotions, likes, and dislikes, and you'll find her to be quite a character. She is starting to realize that she can be both angry and happy or bold and clinging and still remain the object of your affection. As she comes to experience a whole range of emotions, the constancy of your soothing love will help firm up her budding sense of self.

While you and your toddler are engaged in all these complex gestural games and interactions, her body, senses, and language and cognitive capacities are growing in ways that are astonishing. Organizing behavior and emotions into complex patterns is no easy task, though, and your toddler's ability to negotiate this stage is determined to some extent by her muscles' willingness to get her where she wants to go and her senses' clear reading of cues from her environment. The following charts are guides to a few special abilities that are well known and relate to the main goal of this stage, complex problem-solving interaction. All children develop at varying rates and in the great majority of cases this unevenness is perfectly normal, so bear in mind that these charts are approximate. Even more importantly, don't forget that during this stage of her development, your child's most fundamental achievement is her ability to exchange complex, preverbal problem-solving messages with you. Her communication skills are the real key to unlocking her future emotional and cognitive growth.

The Critical Importance of This Stage

Your toddler's new ability to solve problems and understand patterns enables her to make huge leaps in learning to cope with a whole range of emotions, in thinking scientifically, in beginning to understand the difference between right and wrong, and in sensing that she has a self. Let's look at each of these areas in a little more detail.

Coping with Emotions

The elaborate back-and-forths you exchange with your toddler all day long will teach her that reaching out for another human being with gestures, postures, and vocalizations will get her what she wants and bring her pleasure. Each time she enlists your aid in opening up a box where she knows a favorite toy is stashed, or she repeatedly looks to you for feedback as the two of you fit puzzle pieces together, you are helping her understand that it frequently takes many steps to solve a problem. She's also becoming aware that moving from impulse to satisfaction is often dependent on cooperating with another person.

What an important skill this is for learning to cope with emotions! The child whose parent comes running with a handful of cookies at the first sign of a tantrum never gets a chance to learn the valuable lesson that she has to take many steps and organize her actions to achieve a goal. If, instead, the parent promotes a back-and-forth exchange of looks, sounds, and movements that encourages the child to act purposefully, the child learns that assertive step-by-step behavior can pay off. She will gain experience in being sociable as she engages in preverbal and emerging verbal dialogues with you, and feel confident and proud that she can remain in control and still get what she wants. Her self-esteem is thus given an immeasurable boost each time you take her by the hand, look her in the eye, and say, "Show me what you want."

As a child becomes more and more aware that her own sequenced actions will usually get her what she wants, the more she will come to see the world as a reliable, logical place. She will be attracted to the world, and curious about figuring out her place in it, because of the pleasure and satisfaction your negotiations have given her.

Thinking Scientifically

Now's the time to focus on the process of communicating with your child, and to forget about the specific content of your play. Interactions around food, flowers, sunbeams, toy cars, and spider webs are all of equal import. Be as goofy as you like! You'll know by the growing number of spontaneous looks, frowns, grimaces, giggles, or dance steps you exchange with your child that all her systems are working and that she's learning about the world. The idea is to foster lively back-and-forths between the two of you and to resist the temptation to slip into a show-and-tell mode. Your toddler may very well tune you out if you show her a flower and attempt to label its parts for her.

Instead, offer her a flower and see what she makes of it. If she curiously sniffs it, you might animatedly ask if you could smell it, too. When you do, you might try closing your eyes and looking as if you're whiffing ambrosia. See if she wants to explore another part of the flower. If she plucks off a petal, maybe she'll let you pull off another one. You might comment on the petal's silky softness, or say, "Whee! Look at the petal fly away in the wind!" You'll be a sort of admiring colleague while your child acts as lead scientist during your mutual exploration of the garden.

The choice of objects you use as you and your child interact is incidental; the play really is the thing. As you play together, your child's actions should spark a logical reaction from you, but this reaction doesn't have to make scientific sense. When your 16-month-old pushes her toy train along the floor and then kisses the scratch mark she sees on the caboose in an attempt to "make it all better," resist the urge to explain that a toy's "boo-boo'"s don't hurt as hers do. She is learning scientific thinking by seeing patterns, and the pattern she is exploring is how a kiss can make something better. Your toddler is a budding medical investigator! At this point in her life it isn't important to know that plastic trains are inanimate objects. If you engage her sense of fun and adventure while you play, the facts will take care of themselves later on because she is building the logical patterns that will enable her to figure out and, more importantly, know how to think with them.

This is an approach to playing that is difficult for some parents. What most of us don't realize is that there's more educational value in a spontaneous and fun game with our toddlers than in any well-intentioned lecture we may deliver, or computer game we may buy. You needn't worry that your child will miss out if she isn't immediately acquainted with dry facts about the way the world works. On the contrary: Because she is now a pattern perceiver, she understands that objects have intended purposes, and that hairbrushes go on the top of her head and toothbrushes go inside her mouth. It is her ability to detect patterns and trends that organizes her understanding of the world.

As you nudge your interactions with your child in the direction of emotional problem solving, you will be helping her to think both logically and abstractly. Such seemingly ordinary accomplishments as your toddler's ability to find her way back to you as you signal her with silly sounds to return to your side in the kitchen, or her willingness to moo like a cow and then chirp like a bird with you because she now comprehends that sharing sounds with you is fun for both of you, are the linchpins of her growing intellect. Because she can now understand and even initiate long interactive patterns with you, your toddler is becoming a scientific thinker.

Developing a Sense of Right and Wrong

During this period of their development, our toddlers have the ability to perceive patterns in parental behavior that communicate messages about values. Moral concepts about caring and compassion are conveyed each time you show your child how to gently pat a kitten, or how to go easy when she rocks her dolly in a toy cradle. When our gestures show a child how to handle vulnerable things like pets, toys, and other babies, we are showing a respect for other creatures in the environment.

Children learn how to behave in a caring, moral way not only when you respond to them, but when they respond to you in the course of the long interactions you now share. When you gesture to your child that she's being too noisy whether it's by a downward motion of your hand, by covering your ears, or murmuring "Hush" with your forefinger placed against your lips she will most likely respond with a gesture of her own. Perhaps she'll quiet down while putting her own finger on her lip, but rev up the noise level before too long. When you respond with another "Shh!" she'll probably lower her voice once again, because she's starting to take your feelings into account. She's had lots of practice reading and responding to your gestures and feelings during your lengthy dialogues together. Your toddler has a new appreciation that her noise can make you unhappy or uncomfortable.

If your child becomes angry and looks as if she's about to pinch you, you might be likely to frown and wag your finger, saying "No! No!" By gesturing and then urging her to use sounds or actions to show you what she wants, she will learn to avoid taking out her frustration and anger on you. Once she's able to inhibit the pinch, she can be cajoled into pointing to the cupboard when she's hungry or pulling you to the door when she wants to go out. Even though she still may be angry with you, she is also taking your feelings into account because she is responding to your "No! No!" gesture. Through these lengthy interactions, your toddler is learning not only how to regulate her own behavior, but how to do so in accordance with the needs of others. This willingness to change her own behavior is a further indication of your child's growing moral sense.

Sometimes at around 18 months or so, children show signs of what at first glance appears to be altruistic behavior. If a playmate or brother or sister gets hurt and cries, you may see a toddler go over and nicely pat the arm or the top of the head of the wounded child. Most often toddlers are simply copying behavior they have seen others model, but such actions also reveal an intent to do something helpful. Although the child may not understand the full meaning of her gesture now, true empathy will appear later.

When your child behaves aggressively, you have an opportunity to let her know that while her anger may be justified, harmful behavior won't be tolerated. She'll pick up on your attitude toward aggressive behavior long before she learns her first angry word. For instance, a toddler at 17 months may become dismayed if you refuse to remove a food she doesn't like from her high-chair tray. She won't fall for your feigned gusto over the peas or spinach she doesn't like. She may raise her voice and glare at you, and then deliberately tip her dish over. Some children may wait until they have your full attention before sweeping everything off the high-chair tray with naughty pride.

The way you respond to such behavior will send signals to your child about how you and your family view anger and aggression, good and bad feelings, right and wrong. If you habitually overreact and see your child's assertiveness as somehow threatening your own sense of control, and show by your enraged tones, furrowed brow, and tensed shoulders that her aggressive feelings are forbidden, your toddler may link anger and assertiveness to being "bad." She may become overly cautious or rebellious.

As difficult as it may be at times, you can help your child distinguish between acceptable angry feelings and harmful behavior by paying attention to the tone of your voice and your own actions. A firm "No, no!" when she throws her food, coupled with helping her learn to either shake her head "No" or to verbalize the word, may be what's needed. Hitting or biting someone requires immediate restraint. Speak in a serious tone of voice with animated gestures, and show her how to use her own gestures to express anger without hitting or biting. While you are interacting with your child and using gestures to communicate limits, she may also need a brief time away from the toy, activity, or peer that has perhaps overly excited her. The key is to set gentle-but-firm limits while offering her lots of communication at her level, and soothing, too.

The gestures and behaviors we choose to emphasize with our toddlers often convey cultural values. Your child responds to your preferences, which are often a reflection of the culture in which you were raised. The value of gentleness, for example, may be a key concern in one family, and get scant attention in another. One child may be steered toward active, physically robust behavior that is viewed as "good," while another toddler may be taught that being gentle is "good." The very different gestures they both exchange with their family members are beginning to form the basis of their sense of what is right and wrong.

While babies this age are learning to figure out complex patterns involving a full range of emotions as well as those involving time and space, neuronal connections in their brains are continuing to form, just as they did during previous developmental stages, in areas relating to emotional cueing and spatial relations (often in the right side of the brain). For example, finding Mom in another room involves both figuring out space (where Mom is) and connecting that information with the emotional desire to be close to her. Knowing that Mom will give her a hug soon (after she gets off the phone) involves a similar pattern of dealing with emotions and a sense of time.

Developing a Sense of Self

As your baby increasingly begins to use sounds and words meaningfully, to problem-solve, and to sequence her ideas and actions, more and more neuronal connections are forming in the parts of her brain that deal with language, verbal symbols, and understanding patterns. This brain growth is supported as your baby interacts in more complex ways and as she becomes better able to imitate simple sounds and words. Not only do structures of her brain often facilitate the acquisition of language and the ability to sequence and plan ideas and actions, but they also appear to grow as a result of her increasingly complex interactions with her caregivers and others. Clearly, interaction with the environment and the growth of the brain reinforce each other.

(Stanley I. Greenspan. Excerpted from Building Healthy Minds: The Six Experiences That Create Intelligence And Emotional Growth In Babies And Young Children )

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