08 Sep Worried that you might have traumatised your baby or toddler because you said no 🤚 Scared that if you didn’t give in to your toddler’s every demand that you will scar them for life 😳 Perhaps you think that your baby and toddler is too young to understand what they are doing…. 🤔
Did you know that research has shown that children don’t recall events under 3 years old 🧐It’s called childhood amnesia. So children don’t actually remember if they cried or they laughed or what they did between birth and 3 years old.🤔 Most children are only able to recall some childhood memories from the age of 4, and usually it’s as a result of a significant memory that is verbally spoken repeatedly by family around them. As children grow up the memories of childhood often fades with passing time. So the fears that as a parent, not picking up your baby the minute they cry or saying no to your toddler will be traumatising them is unfounded. 😊
However, at the same time, the period of the greatest brain development actually occurs between birth and 3 years old!🤓 So babies and toddlers learn fastest and best in those early years, the skills that they will learn to develop include gross motor skills like rolling, sitting, crawling, walking as well as speech and language skills like babbling, pointing, joint attention and talking. This is also the period of time where babies and toddler learn social skills like sharing, turn taking and requesting. The young brain 🧠is constantly learning and does not differentiate between socially appropriate or inappropriate, what it learns is cause and effect. So if they cry and they get their way or they cry and self settle, that’s how they learn to communicate. Understand that the terrible 2 tantrums not always a rite of passage as much as a rite of learning.
To avoid terrible tantrums consider setting boundaries 🤓right from the start, teaching your baby and toddler skills like self settling, turn taking, rewarding calm behaviours and requesting politely while ignoring tantrum behaviours or screaming demands. Rather than traumatising your child, you are teaching them positive skills for life. 💪
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