I don’t know about you but every time I leave Mac with a new caregiver, I feel like I want to write them a whole book with everything I know about her and then test them about it at the end. Crazy? Yes, but every parent wants the best for their child. As a toddler teacher, I can tell you that I don’t need to know everything, but there are certain things I would love to know when a new toddler comes into my room.

I am going to come right out and admit it: I am worried about showing you guys Mac’s bedroom. Not because there is anything wrong with it; but because every single time I look up stuff about floor beds, there are pictures of these super elaborate floor bed set-ups with highly decorated rooms. Honestly, Mac’s room is the opposite of that. But I finally decided I need to buck up and show you all her room because a Montessori toddler floor bed room doesn’t have to look like it came out of a catalog.

If you’d like to read the other posts in this series, I’ll post them here. First, I talked about how we never used a crib. Then I talked about what a floor bed is. Then I posted about how we shared our bedroom with a floor bed. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom for my #1 piece of advice on safety in a Montessori toddler floor bed room. (Also, check out my post about how despite this nice room, our toddler bed shares with us part time.)

When most people think of toddlers, they don’t find them to be very helpful. And they aren’t. But toddlers love to help and for a long time, they won’t be able to tell if what they are doing is actually helping you or not. Sometimes I give Mac a “job” like putting all of the socks in the laundry basket. It isn’t something I actually need done, but it makes her think she is helping. But there are some toddler chores that are helpful. We recently discovered that Mac loves to help feed our dog, Ralph. Here is how she helps us.

(P.S. Everyone wave to Andrew, the Nerd. He doesn’t feature prominently on the blog very often. Also, if you didn’t see my Facebook post, my dryer broke which is why my drying rack is living in the kitchen for the time being.)

Toddlers have no sense of time. That can make mornings afternoons all of the time really hard. How do you let your child know you are going to be leaving the playground so that they’ll understand? How do you get across that an event will happen, but not yet? There are three phrases I use to help a toddler understand time.

These phrases will seem really obvious, but let me tell you that I don’t hear them used often enough by parents. I tend to hear “We are leaving in 5 minutes” or something along those lines. Let me clue you in: toddlers have no idea what that means. So here are the phrases that really work.

Hi, my name is Mikki and I am a recovering TV addict. As a child, my family lived in the country and only had an antenna. We got 6 channels on a good day, 3 if it stormed. There wasn’t that much to watch so it wasn’t a problem. Fast forward to college and I was let loose into a dorm with cable television and a lot of time on my hands. Suddenly the colorful world of television was at my fingertips. I watched hour upon hour of any show I thought was remotely interesting.

As I got older and got more responsibilities, my television watching kept up, just after work and weekends. The screen was constantly lit up. When I got pregnant (and sicker than a dog), the television was a great distraction. Those early months of maternity leave were spent binge watching shows on Netflix. But then Mac got old enough to start paying attention to the television and I knew something had to change. So I came up with my rule about electronics.

I am a laid back mama. I have worked with kids for so long that not much phases me. I have dealt with the gamut of gross stuff and frustrating stuff so having my own child is no biggie. In fact, I tend to get along better with the second and third time moms I know vs. the first time moms like me. Maybe that is why I am so comfortable having a free range toddler.

I was at the park the other day and while Mac was exploring, she fell a couple of times. No major spills, but enough to make the other moms gasp. They were amazed that she got up, brushed herself off, and continued on her way. She came to me a few times to show me she fell and ask for a kiss or a hug, but mostly she was fine. The other moms remarked out loud how resilient she was compared to other children. How did I get such a resilient child? Well, there are three things I do when my toddler falls down.