Here is an article I composed for parent & child families that you may find of interest.
Why Our Toddlers Seem to Push Our Buttons
Joseph Chilton Pearce on Toddlers
I received a question about balancing our growing children's desire and need to explore with our need to keep them safe and secure, with the sense that parents are guiding the family ship and have not abandoned the wheel. While healthy and consistent (and age appropriate) limits are healthy, it also helps our child and helps keep us sane if we can find appropriate ways for them to learn about the world--and toddlers learn about the world through climbing, running, tumbling, slamming, wrestling, building, toppling, throwing, splashing, and breaking. As Rahima Baldwin writes in "Rhythm and Discipline in Home Life," the first Waldorf kindergarten teachers found it most effective to find an acceptable outlet for something she needed to forbid--ideally before the children even thought of trying the forbidden activity.
Using brain research, Joseph Chilton Pearce describes the toddler's innate need to explore and learn in "The Cycle of Competence" and "Will and the Terrible Two." Because you may need to download and/or print the above selections in order to view them, here is a synopsis of Pearce's argument. As a book such as The Scientist in the Crib would suggest, from birth children are "wired" to explore and learn about the world, to develop connections in their brain. The most profound way they do this is in their bonds with parents and other primary caregivers. Another important way is through free movement and exploration in the environment. Children do not open and close the cabinets or try to open the oven to annoy us (at least at first). They are following a divine and spiritual plan to learn about everything.
Because children have such a strong bond with their parents and and such a strong desire to learn from everything, toddlers find themselves pulled in two directions at once. Pearce describes how a toddler may pause and look at a parent saying, for example, "Don't touch the oven. It is hot!" The toddler, after pausing, proceeds to touch the oven, causing pain in the toddler and dismay in the parent. "He looked right at me and then ignored me!" Pearce advises us to reframe our way of viewing this. The toddler's pause and then apparent disobedience are not, Pearce says, a challenge to us, a toddler pausing to say a la Clint Eastwood, "Go ahead. Make my day." The toddler, rather, has not yet developed control of his will yet and is being carried along by two strong forces: one, always having to explore and learn about everything; the other, wanting to maintain this strong bond with a parent and primary caregiver. The toddler wants to strengthen the bond with mom or dad--hence the pause--but also feels driven to keep exploring--hence the apparent disobedience.
This does not mean we as parents should let our children turn on the oven, drive our cars, and practice with a welding torch just because these experiences have a lot to teach (though we may find with less dangerous forms of exploration such as climbing, cutting, and jumping we can find ways for the children to challenge themselves without coming into undo harm). Limits and boundaries are healthy. What Pearce and others help us remember is that we should also expect our young children (up to six or seven) to forget our boundaries and need patient reminders. As Sharifa Oppenheimer writes, when we are redirecting our children or setting a limit, our words will be much more effective at guiding our children when we use the same tone we would for a statement such as, "Here's the towel." If we steadfastly refrain from transforming our toddlers' need to explore into power struggles, we may find ourselves able to guide them while staying calmer ourselves. Although it is healthy for children to see a diversity of emotions from parents and learn that it is OK to be sad, glad, angry, and anxious, if we provide ostentatious or explosive reactions to our children's forbidden explorations, we may inadvertently foster the development of a young social scientist: "If I do this, Dad explodes like this. Boy, I wonder what Dad would do if I do this!"
Children do need limits. It is helpful if we state them positively, telling the child what she or me may do, or--even better--stating in a general way what is the appropriate thing to do. When mentoring other teachers, I have observed them at a time when a child is disruptive say, "Joe, you may be quiet now," only to have Joe experiment with how long he can be noisy before the teacher does something else. A power struggle begins. I have asked the teachers to consider a phrase such as, "This is the right time to be quiet," or "When we are all quiet, the beauty of silence can come" or "It is polite to listen quietly or sing along." Teachers have reported back that these phrases (and the gesture they implied) have reduced power struggles dramatically and invited more compliance. When a power struggle does emerge with an older toddler or kindergartner and our child needs a cooling off period, Rahima Baldwin advises us to leave the room with the child rather than sending them off by themselves (the chapter in discipline in Hold on to Your Kids follows a similar approach). We stay with the child calmly without lecturing (long tirades tend not to penetrate and may be entertaining) and sit in a calm and boring manner with our child. After a minute to 3, we say, "Let's go try that again" or "We'll do that again in a polite way" or "The kings and queens have been called to the table. I'll be queen and you be king." Young children live and think in pictures, and when we can garner the resources to create living pictures as we guide them, we may find ourselves more effective.
I hope this is helpful. In a follow-up conversation with the parent who sent me to read Pearce again, the parent reported having adjusted the location of some furniture in the kitchen, permitting climbing in a certain area, and redirecting the exploration there. It sounded as if the parent and child were both satisfied--the child could explore; the parent could ensure safety; it was no longer a power struggle.
If you have trouble downloading the selections, they are available in Evolution's End, available in the Kathrine Dickerson Memorial Library.
With warmth and light,
William Geoffrey Dolde
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