$Unique_ID{PAR00218} $Pretitle{} $Title{1 Year to 2 1/2 Years: How Your Child Develops} $Subtitle{} $Author{ Editors of Consumer Guide Mendelson, Robert A Mendelson, Lottie M Meyerhoff, Michael K Ames, Louise Bates} $Subject{Year to 2 1/2 Years Developed Develops Developing Development growth height weight toddler physical physically mental mentally head limbs thinking communicating walking climbing clumsy unsteady toddlers bladder control bowel muscles toilet training trained manipulation manipulate mechanisms mechanism sensorimotor rational progress experimenting thought remember memory time dream dreams realism animism truth lying moral values talk talks talking speak speaks speaking language understanding communicate communicates communication imitate imitates imitation mimic mimics mimicking attachment behavior emotional dependency independence rebellion personality LAGS SPURTS WORRY WORRIED anxiety anxieties} $Log{ As toddlers gain control over their bodies, they like exercising new skills*0060106.tif When children first walk, it takes time for them to refine their movement*0052001.tif When children first walk, it is normal for them to be unsteady for a while*0052201.tif You will see a toddler make tremendous progress in small muscle dexterity*0059601.tif} The New Parents' Question & Answer Book 1 Year to 2 1/2 Years: How Your Child Develops How much growth in height and weight can I expect my toddler to experience during this period? Quite a bit. Although her overall rate of growth will continue to slow down somewhat, your toddler will still make a lot of progress during this period. Typically, two-and-a-half-year-old children are between 33 and 38 inches tall, with the average somewhere around 36 inches. They weigh between 25 and 38 pounds, with the average somewhere around 32 pounds. Again, if your child was large or small in the beginning, you can expect that she will remain at the higher or lower end of these ranges at this point. It is possible, however, that you will begin to see her starting to approach the center of the norms. In any event, as long as your toddler is in good health, don't worry. Growth patterns are unique in every instance, and they are never smooth and regular. All of a sudden, it seems as if my toddler is no longer a baby and is now a small "child" instead. Has her appearance really changed, or just my perception? A little bit of both. During this period, toddlers mature a great deal both physically and mentally. By two and a half years of age, your toddler's physical proportions will have changed dramatically. Her head will no longer appear in any way oversized for her body; her lower limbs no longer seem smaller than her upper limbs; and in many other ways she will have achieved "normal" human shape. These physical changes will be complemented and emphasized by the changes she experiences in other areas of development. It is during this period that your toddler will go from a nonverbal, nonrational creature to one who is capable of thinking and communicating in a rather impressive ways. Although everything will take place gradually over many months, it is not at all unusual for parents to get a sudden sense of transformation as their "baby" disappears and their "child" emerges. My toddler is walking and climbing, but she's very clumsy and unsteady. Is something wrong with her? Nothing that won't be cured in a few months. When children first achieve these abilities, they don't possess them in full-blown form. It takes a little time for them to become familiar with and refine their new forms of movement, so it is perfectly normal for them to be rather clumsy and unsteady for a while--which is why they are called "toddlers." However, as your toddler gains more and more experience, she will become increasingly coordinated and graceful. By the end of this period, you may be quite impressed by the control she has over her body and by the many things she can do. Whereas a one year old may only take one tentative step at a time, a two and a half year old will be running around at a mile a minute. While a one year old may take a few minutes to struggle her way up onto a sofa, a two and a half year old will scoot up a jungle gym in a flash. So be patient. Right now you may be alarmed by your toddler's clumsiness and unsteadiness, but very soon you may be alarmed by her skill and daring. When will my toddler develop control over her bladder and bowel muscles? This is a tricky subject. Typically, toddlers achieve the capacity to physically control their bladder and bowel muscles somewhere between 18 and 24 months of age. However, simply having some physical control over these muscles does not mean that they are capable of complete control with regard to the functions of urination and defecation. It takes time and mental development for toddlers to learn how to recognize the sensations that immediately precede these functions, and even more time and mental development to learn how to respond appropriately. Furthermore, it will be several months before their control over their bladder and bowel muscles grows from momentary to significantly strong. Consequently if someone claims to have a toddler who is toilet trained at 18 months, it probably means that the person has somehow managed to get her toddler to "hold it" for a few seconds while she whisks her off quickly to the bathroom. That's a long way from true toilet training. Will I see much improvement in my toddler's small muscle skills during this period? You certainly will. Although a one year old typically is rather adept at using her hands and fingers to manipulate various objects and operate simple mechanisms, a two and a half year old is incredibly more impressive in these areas. For example, a baby may be able to pick up a ball and throw it wildly, whereas a toddler will eventually be able not only to throw a ball with a fair amount of accuracy, but may be able to catch it quite reliably as well. A baby may be able to operate simple levers, such as light switches, whereas a toddler may be able to use something as complex as an old-fashioned nutcracker. In everyday routines, such as using cups and utensils when eating and drinking, and in special situations, such as using brushes and crayons when painting and drawing, you will see your toddler making tremendous progress in the strength and dexterity of her small muscles. In the course of her play, my toddler now appears to be "figuring things out." Does this mean she's really starting to "think"? During this period, your toddler will indeed progress from a "sensorimotor" style of thought to a truly rational mode. However, up until 18 to 24 months of age, her senses and physical movements will remain her primary tools for analyzing information and dealing with the world around her. It won't be until after two years of age that she comes to rely heavily on the mental images in her mind. Even while she's still in the sensorimotor stage, however, your toddler will quite often be "figuring things out." You may notice that in addition to exploring and investigating, your toddler also will be doing a lot of "experimenting." No longer content simply to see what things are like and what happens to them as the result of some basic action, it will almost be like she is driven to find out "what if?" Even though everything must still be directly in front of her, she will start systematically applying different strategies and gauging their relative results through trial and error. Eventually, she will be able to carry out many plans and test various options in her mind before choosing one or two to be translated into direct action. How can I tell when my toddler is beginning to use mental images and is engaging in true "rational" thought? Somewhere between 18 and 24 months of age, your toddler will start to rely on her mental imagery to a noticeable extent. As she goes about her play and encounters some problem, she likely will stop for a few seconds before proceeding with some plan of action. This is a sign that "the gears are turning," and she is running through several options in her mind. Of course, just like it took her many months to learn how to use her body effectively, it will take your toddler months and years to learn how to make the best use of her increasing mental capacities. Don't expect her to become fully rational overnight. At first, her thinking will be tentative, and she may very well support her mental analyses with occasional physical trials just to be sure. However, by the end of this period, you probably will see your toddler solving simple problems--such as how to get a toy out of a box, how to get your attention while you're occupied with something, or how to climb to the top of a high chest--quickly and easily. Will my toddler now remember everything she sees, hears, and does and everything that happens to her? As your toddler passes her second birthday, you can expect her to start retaining more and more of her experiences for longer and longer periods of time. Although she will be capable of creating mental images right from the beginning of this period, they will be rather weak and will not last more than a minute or two initially. However, by the end of this period, you can expect that your toddler will remember quite a bit from day to day, and she might remember particularly strong sensations and impressive experiences for months. Still, throughout this period, the major gains will be in the area of short-term memory, so don't expect too much from your toddler at this point. It will be more difficult to distract her from something in which she has a strong interest, and it will be easier to deal with her on a daily basis in terms of giving instructions, admonitions, etc. Overall and in the long run, however, it is likely she will forget considerably more than she retains. Can my toddler comprehend concepts such as "later" and "tomorrow"? Due to her expanding memory and increasing thinking skills, your toddler may have a pretty good understanding of these concepts--along with concepts such as "earlier" and "yesterday"--sometime around her second birthday or a little beyond. However, it will be a while before she can use these terms with any precision. Keep in mind that retaining mental images and moving them around in her mind is still new to your toddler. It will take many months and years before she has had sufficient experience to place a lot of things in all their proper relations with one another. Consequently, at first, "earlier" and "later" will have little meaning beyond "not now" and "yesterday" and "tomorrow" may mean nothing more than stronger versions of "earlier" and "later." It is therefore a good idea to help your toddler out by being precise and placing various events in relation to each other. For instance, "...after Mommy comes home and we eat dinner" will have considerably more impact on your toddler's mind than something vague like "... a little later this evening." Even though she's fairly rational, my toddler can't seem to understand that her dreams aren't real. Is this unusual? Not at all. Keep in mind that mental images are very new to your toddler. It will take quite a while before she fully understands how they work. The inability to distinguish dreams from reality is one sign of this immature thinking, and it is referred to as "realism." The sights, sounds, and sensations of her dreams are identical to those that your toddler experiences during the day, so at first, she has no way of distinguishing them. As adults, we often have trouble with particularly powerful dreams when we first wake up. Eventually, we can factor in certain pieces of information--like the fact that we're still in bed--and come up with a rational analysis of what we've just experienced. Toddlers, on the other hand, are operating on a very simple level and cannot handle a variety of factors all at once. Another example of this sort of thing is referred to as "animism." This is the toddler's conviction that anything that moves is alive. In her limited experience, that's the way the world works. Therefore, you may find your toddler talking to, becoming afraid of, or otherwise interacting "socially" with inanimate objects that she sees in motion. When my toddler does something wrong and I ask her about it, her explanation sometimes strays far from the truth. Is she capable of lying at this point? Not really. Your toddler's first forms of thought are extremely self-centered, or "egocentric." Her only frame of reference is her own personal experience, and at this point, she is completely incapable of seeing something from another person's perspective or taking into account factors that don't relate directly to her wants and needs of the moment. Consequently, when you question your toddler about something "bad" that she has done, she may be motivated primarily by a desire to avoid your displeasure; that desire will control the bulk of her thinking. The result may be an outlandish lie, but you can't really accuse your toddler of being "deceptive." For example, if you ask her, "Did you spill the milk?" she may think for a moment, then respond, "No, Joey (her older brother) did it." Her thinking ability at this stage allows her to come up with a previously successful strategy--blaming her brother for a mishap. It does not, however, allow her to take into account the fact that her brother is at school, that you were right there to see her do it, and that there's no way she's going to beat the rap. Is my toddler still too young to have any sense of moral values? As the months go by, your toddler will begin to get a fairly clear sense of "good" and "bad." But even by the end of this period, she still will not be able to comprehend the concepts of "right" and "wrong" in any meaningful way. Keep in mind that her thinking will be extremely egocentric at this stage, so what she chooses to do will be governed primarily by her own wants and desires of the moment. In other words, your toddler's "moral" reasoning will be based entirely on immediate rewards and punishments that she perceives for herself. She will not take into account the rights and feelings of others when making her decisions. As long as you monitor her behavior closely, you can serve as her "conscience" and help control any inappropriate tendencies. You can't, however, expect that she will be receiving reliable and valid guidance from within her own mind at this point. My neighbor's toddler didn't talk until she was almost two and then seemed to start speaking in complete sentences. Is she unusual? This phenomenon is certainly not typical, but it does happen fairly often. As discussed previously, the normal range for the onset of expressive language is anywhere between six months and two years of age. However, almost all children begin to understand words between six and eight months of age. Consequently, even though a toddler may not be saying anything, that does not mean she isn't developing language skills. Once she does start speaking, it should be no surprise that she starts speaking at a level that is considerably more complex than another child who began speaking many months earlier. This reinforces the fact that parents should not make too much out of the date at which their child starts talking. It is clear that the onset of the first spoken words has relatively little significance for overall language development in the long run. As long as your toddler is demonstrating normal hearing and an ever-progressing understanding of words, don't worry if her expressive language seems to be lagging behind. Once my toddler starts talking a lot, can I assume that her ability to understand words and her ability to use them will progress at about the same pace from that point on? Although both receptive and expressive language development will proceed rapidly from this point on, it is probably not a good idea to think of them as parallel processes yet. For the most part, even by the end of this period, toddlers will be able to understand many more things than they will be able to say. Learning how to produce all the sounds properly and put all the different parts of speech into their proper place will take many months and years. So you can assume that, in general, your toddler will be a considerably better listener than talker. On the other hand, due to their increasing imitative capacities, toddlers who are talking may often say extraordinary things. In most cases, they have no real idea of what it is they are saying. Consequently, if your toddler surprises you with a very impressive word or phrase, chances are she has merely mimicked something she has heard; it will be a while yet before she can pull the same thing out of her own mind. By the time she's two and a half, can I expect my toddler to understand just about everything I say? By the end of this period, it is reasonable to expect that your toddler will understand somewhere between one half and three fourths of the everyday language she will use for the rest of her life. Consequently, for the most part, you probably will find it fairly easy to communicate with her. However, you have to be careful about expecting too much from your toddler at this point. She still will have a long way to go before she will be able to understand everything that pertains to her immediate experience, and it will be years before she will be able to handle complex concepts. So, for instance, you can give a toddler a complicated instruction, such as "Pick up your shoe, take it into the bedroom, put it in the blue box, and put the box under the bed," and you can expect her to comprehend all the nouns, verbs, and prepositions completely--even if she's never heard them put together in that particular way before. On the other hand, saying something like "You can't have that toy because we can't afford it and your Mommy would have a fit if I gave in to you again" is not likely to have full impact. Sometimes my toddler says a phrase perfectly, but later she will say the same sort of thing all wrong. Why is that? During the early stages of expressive language development, there are two distinct processes upon which toddlers are operating. One is imitation, and the other is mental reasoning. Consequently, your toddler will occasionally come out with something impressive simply because her ability to mimic is quite advanced at this point. However, later on she may attempt to put a similar phrase together in her own mind before she speaks, and because her mental capacities are still relatively limited, she is not likely to produce a perfect composition. Therefore, parents have to be careful about judging the quality of what their toddlers are saying. Even though it doesn't appear to be as good on the surface, a phrase that your toddler puts together herself is actually superior in some ways to a "perfect" phrase she produces simply by repeating something she's just heard. Will my toddler continue to depend heavily on me for emotional support throughout this period? In the beginning, it is likely that you will actually see an increase in your toddler's attachment behavior as her emotional dependency upon you reaches a peak. However, starting around 16 or 18 months of age, your toddler will begin to develop a strong sense of herself as "her own person" and will begin moving more and more toward emotional independence. Of course, this does not mean that you will no longer be important to her in an emotional sense. First of all, the confidence and trust in your support that she has built up over many months is the bedrock for her personal security. Furthermore, in times of crises--and even in times of less traumatic but still significantly stressful circumstances--you can expect your toddler to count on you for the emotional strength she needs to make it through. But in terms of routine activities, by the end of this period, you can expect that your toddler will be comfortable playing alone for long periods of time. You can also expect her to become interested in establishing relationships with adults and peers outside the family. Will my toddler make a smooth transition from dependency to independence? Unfortunately, no. The process that a toddler goes through in establishing a strong sense of self can be extraordinarily unpleasant for her parents. Understanding and becoming comfortable with her own personal power is not something that a toddler achieves overnight. It involves a lot of pushing limits, testing wills, and other exercises through which she learns precisely what the limits are. It is only by repeated assertions and challenges that she comes to comprehend where her authority ends and the authority of her parents begins, and how strong each is when compared to the other. In other words, in order for her to become independent, a toddler often must fight against those upon whom she previously was completely dependent. She does so not out of anger or malice, but because she has few other ways in which to form a frame of reference. Therefore, as will be the case when this process is repeated on a much larger scale during adolescence, it helps if parents can avoid taking their toddler's "rebellion" phase personally at this point. Will my toddler be developing permanent personality traits during this time? Generally, it is somewhere around the second birthday that toddlers begin demonstrating personality traits that they are likely to maintain for years to come. Characteristics such as shyness, stubbornness, selfishness, and humor seem to start showing up routinely and consistently from this point on. Of course, it is possible that a child may have demonstrated any or all of these traits to a certain extent somewhat earlier. It is not until this point, however, that personality traits become reasonably reliable and stable. On the other hand, you should note that no characteristics of this kind should be considered completely permanent--human beings are capable of change throughout life. However, from now on, the longer a particular personality trait is entrenched, the more difficult it will be to turn it around or reshape it. LAGS AND SPURTS It is important for parents to realize that development tends to proceed in lags and spurts rather than in continuous, smooth transitions. When looking at a developmental chart, it is easy to get a false impression of the nature of "normal" or "average" development. Although the majority of toddlers may start at roughly the same spot and end up at roughly the same spot during this period, their individual rates and patterns of development will be very irregular and will rarely be identical. At various times, some toddlers will be increasing their physical skills in leaps and bounds while their language skills are just creeping forward; others will be making slow progress with physical skills and rapid advances in language skills. A couple of months later, everyone may very well have switched paces completely in all areas. Therefore, if parents expect their toddlers to progress in even increments at set times, they are likely to be alternately surprised and disappointed. They are also likely to be inappropriately talking about their toddler "falling behind" or "moving ahead." Perhaps it will help to think of your toddler's development as a leisurely cross-country drive from New York to Los Angeles. Even though she may get caught in some heavy traffic trying to get out of New York, she'll probably make up a lot of time zipping through the desert later on; if she rushes through the industrial states in the East, she may stop to soak up the scenery when she gets to the mountains in the West; and even though she may take an entirely different route than another toddler, chances are that they will both arrive in Los Angeles at approximately the same time. WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE WORRIED It is natural for parents--particularly first-timers--to be constantly worried about their toddler's development. In general, being just a little patient often goes a long way toward relieving many anxieties. However, it is an unfortunate fact that from time to time, genuine problems do arise that require active intervention. So, if your toddler repeatedly shows up at the lower end of the "normal" ranges and/or consistently deviates substantially from what is described as "standard" performance, it is not unreasonable at all for you to seek professional help. When you do seek such help, keep two major things in mind. First, pediatricians do not have all-encompassing expertise. Because they are the professionals with whom parents are likely to have routine contact, they tend to get asked about everything, even though their training and experience is not without limits. So if the problem is apparently physical in nature, such as abnormal growth pattern, apparent hearing loss, etc., then by all means consult a pediatrician; and be prepared to have the pediatrician refer you to a specialist for certain problems. On the other hand, if the problem has to do with a seemingly low level of language comprehension, an inability to operate simple mechanisms, or anything else that may be outside the clearly medical realm, it might be better to consult a developmental psychologist, developmental pediatrician, or early childhood educator. Second, because early development is so typically erratic and even bizarre on occasion, some professionals may occasionally lapse into the habit of automatically reassuring parents that there is nothing to worry about. However, as it turns out, the hardcore instincts of parents are fairly reliable. Therefore, if you find yourself chronically concerned about something, keep pursuing specialists until you get an answer that truly satisfies you.