Appropriate Expectations for Infants and Young Toddlers

Knowing what to expect from children at various stages of development can help with childcare, preschool and parenting. As parents, this information will help you navigate parenthood properly. As a preschool educator, this will help you determine if a child is falling behind or at grade level. As a childcare provider, this information will help you properly adjust your responses to a child based on appropriate expectations for infants and young toddlers.

Better understanding the changes that take place at different stages in development will help you evaluate your parenting, childcare, and preschool education style as each child grows and develops.

Independence

It is hard to imagine your new baby as independent. Newborns seem so helpless. In reality, even newborns are beginning to show early independence by refusing to nurse or take a bottle when they are full and playing when you wish they would be sleeping! The real emergence of independence comes around 4 or 5 months as babies begin to learn to quiet themselves and calm down without using the early reflexive soothing of sucking.

The next independent behavior that fascinates parents is the ability to maintain interest in objects and things that can be manipulated. Mothers and fathers often marvel that a 6- or 7-month old baby can maintain interest in rattles, squeak toys, and even books for what seems like a very long time.

Soon, developing independence becomes physical.

Learning to roll over, sit alone, hold one’s own bottle without assistance, crawl, and finally pull to a stand, balance, and take steps are all crucial steps toward independence.

Imagine how wonderful it feels to be enjoying indoor playing and to look where you want to look, get something you want to get, or get up and go over to your favorite person for a hug. These are major steps in independent behavior.

Along with physical independence comes the beginning of negativism – the other side of the independence coin. As children learn to be independent, they begin to question where their independence begins and where their parents’ control ends.

This sets up the inevitable confrontations of wills as parents choose which battles to fight and begin to set limits and enforce rules. This stage typically happens around preschool age. The push for independence with your young toddler can get worse as they attend preschool and childcare with other children their age.

At this stage, it seems that whatever you want is different from what your younger toddler wants. He/she wants up, so you pick him/her up. Then your younger toddler wants down! This behavior shows that your younger toddler is still not sure if he/she is ready to exert independence. Sometimes it is easier to let Mom and Dad do it rather than to take those scary steps toward independence.

It is helpful to look at the negative behavior of the younger toddler as an attempt to develop independence rather than as emerging oppositional behavior. Viewed this way, parents can focus on the positive behavior (independence-seeking behavior) rather than the negative (temper tantrums and defiance).

Self-Control

An important developmental task is learning the expectations of the family and society and matching behavior to the rules. Knowledge about these important expectations comes from experience, such as going to a childcare facility, and help from supportive adults.

Children are not born able to comply with the rules of the world; they construct this knowledge through interactions and experiences that expose them to the rules and behavioral expectations that accompany rules (e.g., be quiet in church or sit down to eat). This process is called the internalization of control – the ability to comply with expectations without reminders or support.

Infants and younger toddlers are almost totally controlled externally – that is, they depend on others to keep them safe, support them in following established rules, and succeed in interactions with others.

How, then, do they learn to internalize rules?

The answer is simple. They learn to internalize the rules by having the rules consistently and constantly applied and followed. For example, when an older infant picks up the television remote control, most parents take it away and tell the child that the remote is for adults and not babies and then put it up. This rule will be explained to babies a thousand times over the next few months.

As the baby becomes an older toddler, he/she will pick up the remote, turn to mom or dad to see if they will follow the rule, and then play with it even while knowing the remote is off-limits. This illustrates the external nature of self-control. The younger toddler has learned that there is a rule pertaining to the remote control but has not internalized the rule.

Internalization means that the child can control his/her actions without adult support. Younger toddlers still need external support to comply with rules, even when they have figured out what the rules are! And they need many, many reminders to confirm that the rule really does apply every time. It’s helpful to enroll your young toddler in childcare or digital preschool to provide more experiences of rule-following to develop this skill.

Social Expectations

Learning social expectations is also a slow and gradual process for the infant and younger toddler and is tied very closely to emotional development. All parents have been puzzled when their delightful 7- or 8-month-old who smiles at every responsive face becomes unfriendly and suddenly terrified by unfamiliar people.

This change in behavior represents the completion of the attachment process – a very positive step in emotional development. This is not a good time to make new friends, change schools, move to a new room, or find a new childcare center.

Social expectations for infants and younger toddlers need to be grounded in their developmental context. Here are some appropriate expectations for infants and younger toddlers:

• Don’t count on being able to make it through dinner when you go out to eat with children under 2. You’ve seen it before – Dad eats while Mom holds the baby or walks the younger toddler. Then they switch!

• Don’t expect a younger toddler to adjust quickly when you leave him/her in a new situation unless there are familiar adults. For example, if a younger toddler hasn’t seen Grandma since being a baby, the younger toddler will probably resist going with Grandma until they have had some time to get reacquainted.

• Children are unable to “share” until well into the third year. Parents may help them take turns, share resources, or wait for a turn, but spontaneous sharing behavior doesn’t occur consistently until after the third birthday.

• Manners are difficult for younger children. Eating with a utensil instead of hands, staying at the table until finished, waiting for everyone to finish before getting up, and not dawdling are difficult expectations until children are 18 months or older. That doesn’t mean you don’t have rules about these issues; it just means you will have to be the one who enforces the rules.

• Expectations like touching softly, playing nicely, and keeping your hands to yourself are also difficult for infants and younger toddlers. Most children this age don’t really mean to pull a friend’s hair. It just looked so interesting that it had to be touched. Stay close, and help your child learn these skills by modeling the skills and supporting their attempts.

Expectations with Friends

Babies and younger toddlers have a very endearing quality that can cause problems for them when they are in groups at preschool or in a childcare setting. They are very egocentric – focused on themselves. They are not able, for example, to understand that the finger in their mouths might belong to another feeling person or that the baby they are crawling over might not like it.

Babies and younger toddlers can’t take the point of view of another child, so they need adult support to understand if they get too close or need to be with others.

When you get together with friends or family where babies and younger toddlers might get together, remember to look at them as a group of individual, unconnected children. Stay close and help them learn the process of interacting with others as their social skills emerges and grow.

Learning Academic Skills

Many child development specialists believe that the foundation for learning is built during the first three years of life.

This is a scary thought to some parents because our academic experiences started at age 5 or 6. We have no idea how to “teach” our babies and younger toddlers.

In reality, parents need to know that everything they do with their child is teaching. We start by teaching our babies that we love them. Then we teach them to depend on us. Then we teach them how to play with objects. Then we teach them how to scoot to get something, and so forth. What we may not know is how important these early discovery and exploratory skills are for later learning.

Each time we interact with our children, we are teaching.

And with each positive, playful experience a baby or younger toddler builds potential for academic readiness and success. While this information may be overwhelming for a first time parent, there are resources to help you through these first few years of your child’s life. Consider joining our Parent Advisor private Facebook group or read more blog posts at Peake Academy and Play Boutiue websites.

Every toddler experiences their own stages of development with manners, rule-following, and meeting the expectations of their parents. During this stage of parenting, you’ll find that your older toddler is demanding to be more independent and slowly learning that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Learn more about Appropriate Expectations for Older Toddlers on our Parent Advisor Blog

Using a few signs as your baby begins to communicate helps you to connect with your child as well as ease their frustration when trying to convey their needs when they cannot verbally speak them yet. Because infants develop fine muscles in their hands before those required for speech, signing allows you to communicate with your baby before he or she can talk. Here’s an amazing book we prepared for you. Illustrated here are some starter words you can teach your child. Choose a sign to use before or during an activity, using the spoken word along with the gesture.

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