The ‘terrible two’s’ – an important stage in development

May 4, 2022 | Testimonials

When you’re in the second year of your life, every day is one of discovery and new possibilities.  These have to be explored immediately. At this age, waiting is not an option, especially as you are discovering that you are your own person who should be able to choose and do some things for yourself.  Language becomes peppered with “no,” “mine,” “me do it.”  This excitement is accompanied by emotions that have still to be mastered.  Too often you become overwhelmed and meltdowns follow even the smallest thing.

Writing for The Conversation, Rochelle Matacz and Lynn Priddis report research that shows tantrums occur in 87% of 18— to 24-month-olds, 91% of 30 to 36-month-olds, and 59% of 42- to 48-month-olds—often on a daily basis.  With these percentages, labelling toddlers as being in the ‘terrible twos’ might sound accurate but is not wholly fair.  Such a derogatory label fails to grasp the huge developmental growth happening at this age. It also fails to celebrate the developing emotional life of a toddler, at once complex, multifaceted and exhilarating.

What’s going on?

In the second year, we see a huge surge in capacities coupled with lots of seeming inappropriate behaviours.  At this age, children begin to establish independence while simultaneously needing to learn ways of coping with intense feelings such as fear, anger, frustration and sadness. Intense, uncontrolled feelings and defiance are normal at this age.

Although it is challenging stage, sensitive parenting plays an important part in social and emotional development during this time.   One important component of responsive parenting is the ability to empathise with your young child; to understand that the child’s behaviour has meaning and is driven by feelings, thoughts, desires and intentions.

Trying to understand the world from the child’s point of view helps a parents anticipate, interpret and respond to the child’s behaviour in ways that build the child’s growing capacity to regulate and ultimately control their emotions.

Responding to a tantrum with anger or an attempt to stop the behaviour by raising one’s voice can frighten a child and this raises the distress already fuelling the meltdown.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is a tribute to tantrums He gives the following Three guidelines for parents:

 

  1. Be aware of your own responses

Tantrums can be emotionally activating for parents. Being aware and making sense of your own feelings will help you to respond sensitively to your child’s distress. When you realise that you are not managing your anger caused by the child’s meltdown, you become calmer and can better focus on the emotions experienced by the child.

  1. Identify and validate your child’s difficult feelings

Young children need help from their parents to recognize that the feelings they are expressing through their behaviours are just that: feelings that will pass in time. They need help to name them, work out what is causing them and figure out what might help. 

  1. Search for underlying meaning

Remember not to take emotional outbursts personally. Viewing a tantrum as a means of communication helps parents consider the likely causes of a child’s distress and to think through possible solutions. 

With consistent support, toddlers gradually learn to tolerate frustration, gain a sense of how to control their strong feelings and find words to express what is happening inside them.

The good news is that this stage does not last too long!

 

 

 

 

 

Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy.  Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this  interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation. 

Image supplied by Freepik.