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Category: Motherhood
Toddlers are so adorable when they are babbling. That is, until they are trying to tell you something and you have absolutely no idea what they are trying to tell you. Take it from someone who speaks toddler language, there are four strategies that I use when I can’t understand what a toddler is saying. (Now, if your toddler just won’t stop asking you “Why?” then read here.)
When Mac was born, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with her. She slept and ate, but how in the world do you play with a baby? I discovered that there are four very easy activities that should be done with every Montessori baby.
Eating as a family is so important. I am totally savoring the fact that right now we can have a nice dinner together almost every night. As Mac and any future siblings get older and busier, it will be harder to sit down together. But right now, we manage to have nice family dinners. I have come up with four different things we use to make dinner extra special on an otherwise normal night.
As I have written about before, we never used an infant seat with Mac. Many people would question us about how we managed to make things work without one. It was much easier than expected to carry her around. There are three, very simple ways we managed to still go out and about without an infant seat. Two were helpful when she was younger and the third is one we still use today.
The toddlers in my room bring their own lunches everyday. And there is one thing I frequently see in there that I hate with a passion: food pouches. I’m talking about the applesauce pouches and yogurt tubes. Most of you will probably say things along these lines:
“But my kids love them!”
“But they are so easy to throw in a lunch box!”
“But my kids can eat them in the car seat on the way to school!” (although for more on why kids shouldn’t snack in the car, read this post.)
Well let me tell, there are three big reasons (and one small reason) why I hate them.
Snacking in the car seems so prevalent nowadays. Many children in my school come in covered in crumbs from eating breakfast in the car. Some are even upset because they have had to leave their sippy cup in the car. And I’m left wondering what happened to eating at a table. I talked a little about that yesterday in my post about using an open glass instead of a sippy cup with toddlers.
Now hear me out, I get it. Sometimes you are on a road trip and you have to get somewhere and can’t stop. Or every once in a while you have a morning where everything goes wrong and the only thing you can do is shove a granola bar at your kid as you pull out of the driveway. We all have those days.
But there are two major problems that come from regularly snacking in the car and no, a dirty car isn’t one of them.
There have been stories in the news lately about sippy cup lids getting all moldy and disgusting. There is a really easy solution to that, but most people don’t want to hear it. It makes them nervous and uneasy. They have lots of questions about how in the world you can make it work. But I have a really easy solution to make sure your child isn’t drinking mold: get rid of the sippy cups and use an open glass instead. Yes, even for babies and toddlers.
Any parent of a toddler is very familiar with tantrums. Toddlers will scream, throw themselves on the floor, and squeeze some tear out for the most irrational reasons. Believe it or not, there is a reason for this: a toddler’s sense of order is just coming into play. If you want to read more in-depth about the sense of order, read this post here.
But imagine if you were an explorer and you mapped out an area before you went to bed. When you wake up in the morning and look outside, everything is different. How confusing and frustrating it would be. That is what the world is like for toddlers. From the time a child is born, they map their world. My toys are in that basket, the couch is over there, the coffee table is there. If we rearrange or even move something small, we are messing up their world. We have offended their sense of order and they just want their world to stay the same.
Anecdotally, I can tell you I have seen numerous tantrums caused by a disruption to routine or physical space. Sadly, many parents seem clueless to the cause and just end up frustrated. Sometimes after a few days where a child has seemed “off” with their mood, we find out one of the parents is on a business trip and their morning routine has been totally different. No wonder they are having trouble! So what can we do? We can keep their map intact. There are two simple ways to do that: keep things tidy and stick to a routine.
Does your toddler cry when you fold laundry a different way? Were they inconsolable when you suggested walking a different way to the park? Or do they demand that you sing the same dumb song every time they are in the bathtub because you made the mistake of doing it one time? Well good news, your toddler isn’t a dictator or drama queen in the making, they are just getting their sense of order.
I’ll admit, I love to browse Pinterest. It is fun to not only find new ideas to try, but also to dream about what my house could look like. It seems like some people have their entire house ready for photographs at any moment. So when I first started to reorganize Mac’s toy closet, I had half a thought to try to make it picture perfect. After that half second of madness, I stopped myself because toy storage doesn’t have to be pretty! It just has to be functional. So here is a not Pinterest perfect example of toy storage (where toys live when they aren’t in the toy rotation.)
