What to Expect the Toddler Years (37 page)

If you have a fear of dogs yourself, you will need to overcome yours before you can help your toddler conquer his. If you try to hide your fear, your anxiety, no matter how subtle, will be transmitted to your child, telling him that there
is
something to be afraid of—no matter how you try to tell him in words and actions that there isn’t.

“Not only isn’t my toddler afraid of dogs, she’s completely fearless, even with animals she’s never met. And that worries me.”

Dogs and toddlers have a lot in common—they’re frisky, exuberant, volatile, impulsive, unpredictable, and often hard to control. Put them together
and you’ve got either the stuff photo opportunities are made of—or a disaster waiting to happen.

To be sure one of your toddler’s canine encounters doesn’t dissolve into disaster, start instilling a little caution now. Whenever she runs up to a strange dog (or one you know well enough not to trust), stop her before she gets too close. Without alarming her (which could turn her from fearless to fearful), explain, “You can pet a dog only if Mommy or Daddy is with you and says it’s okay. And if we don’t know the dog, it might be scared of us. So we can’t go too close to the dog, and we can’t touch it.” Also begin making your toddler familiar with the pet prescriptions on page 85.

“My daughter hardly ever eats, and when she does, she doesn’t take more than a bite or two. She’s been growing well, according to her doctor, but I don’t see how long she can keep that up without nourishment.”

When it comes to eating and growing, a toddler’s body works in mysterious ways. Toddlers manage to grow and thrive taking in amounts of food that, from the parental point of view, seem insufficient to nourish a grasshopper. The fact is, in spite of protests from Mom and Dad that they are “living on nothing but air,” most kids labeled “poor eaters” actually get adequate nourishment.

Study after study has shown that, given the opportunity, healthy children whose eating habits haven’t been thwarted by parental pushiness will neither starve nor overfeed themselves; they will eat just as much as they need for normal growth. It’s your job to provide the nourishing food, and then to step back and let your child (and her body’s mysterious ways) do the rest.

If you nevertheless harbor some nagging doubts, see page 15 for how to keep a toddler food diary and page 516 for feeding tips. Of course, if your toddler’s growth starts to slow down or she doesn’t seem to be energetic and happy, share your concerns with her doctor.

“One day my son will eat nonstop, the next day he’ll eat next to nothing. It’s driving me crazy.”

To adults who are accustomed to consuming roughly the same amount of food each day, spread out among roughly the same number of meals and snacks, a toddler’s binge-and-starve approach to dining may be disconcerting. But such erratic eating is very common among, and completely normal for, the booster-seat set. A toddler’s diet can balance itself out in any number of lopsided and unpredictable equations: One day he may eat a bountiful breakfast but hardly touch lunch and supper; the next day he’ll eat a bare-bones breakfast, a lavish lunch, and a paltry dinner; one day he’ll eat up a storm at all three meals, the next day nary a drizzle at any of them; one day his total caloric intake may appear to rival a fullback’s, the next day it may seem more in line with that of a flea.

Scrutinize each meal, or even each day’s worth of meals, and you’re certain to see a nutritional roller coaster. Look at the bigger picture—a few days’ worth of meals at a time—and you’re bound to see at least some semblance of nutritional balance. If you try to force your child into gastronomic conformity—pushing him to eat when he doesn’t feel
like eating, or to stop eating when you feel he’s eaten too much—you’ll end up with a child who doesn’t know how to respond to his feelings of hunger and fullness and who may eventually develop eating problems. If you overlook his eating eccentricities—letting him eat heartily when hunger strikes, stop when it’s abated, and skip a meal when he’s not hungry—your child will be more likely to grow up with a healthy approach to eating.

A word of caution: A toddler or young child should not be given complete freedom of choice when it comes to the food he eats. Though allowing a toddler to decide how much to eat at each meal and snack makes nutritional sense, allowing him to decide he’s hungry for a doughnut instead of cereal or a bowl of potato chips instead of a bowl of pasta doesn’t. Offer your toddler only nutritionally worthy choices—then you’ll be safe letting him make his own selections (a meat-and-potatoes dinner or a slice of whole-wheat French toast with sliced banana, not a meat-and-potatoes dinner or a pile of sugary cookies). So be sure to provide your toddler with only the “good stuff” recommended in The Toddler Diet (see
Chapter Eighteen
) and to follow the tips on page 323 to make sure he develops healthful eating habits.

“When my son was younger, he ate everything we offered him. Now I can’t get him to even try something new, and he rejects practically all his old favorites. Could he be sick?”

When a happy, active toddler suddenly develops picky eating habits, it’s more likely to be a sign of self-assertion than a sign of sickness. In the golden days of babyhood, your son’s philosophy was simple: If it was fun and it felt good, he did it. Eating, fitting that formula, was something he did with plenty of gusto and with little reflection—taking pleasure in a pure and uninhibited sensual experience. Now his philosophy isn’t so simple, and feeding him isn’t, either.

Since rebellion at the dinner table is a normal accompaniment of toddlerhood, don’t try to fight it. Chances are you won’t beat it anyway. Instead, give up
without
a fight and let freedom of choice ring for your little rebel (which eventually may decrease his need to rebel). The guidelines on page 517 will help with this and other feeding problems.

If, however, in addition to not eating, your child seems cranky and out of sorts or doesn’t seem to be growing or gaining weight, talk with his doctor. Illness or another medical problem may be responsible for the poor appetite.

“When do we switch our little girl from a high chair to a booster seat?”

The best seat in the house for a toddler depends on the toddler who’s sitting in it. Some toddlers are perfectly happy in their high chairs until they physically grow out of them, but the wriggling and whining of other high-chair captives makes it clear that they’re ready—and eager—to be relocated as soon as possible.

If your child does more complaining than eating in her high chair, or if she’s indicated a desire to sit at the table with the rest of the family, it’s time for a booster seat. Be sure that the seat you buy can be attached securely to a chair or fastened to a tabletop, and that your toddler can be strapped safely into the
seat. If the seat is the kind that attaches to the table, be sure not to place a chair beneath it; a toddler can easily push off against a chair, dislodge her seat, and go flying.

Most toddlers are ready to move out of their high chairs and on to less confining eating–seating arrangements sometime in the middle of the second year.

Older toddlers often prefer to dine on their knees rather than in a booster seat. See Safe Seating, page 149.

Also be sure that when she’s sitting at the table, it isn’t one big booby trap. Clear the surfaces she can reach (you may be surprised at how far her boardinghouse reach extends) of breakable, spillable, and dangerous items, including salt and pepper shakers, the sugar bowl, hot beverages, knives, forks, glass vases, and foods that pose a potential choking hazard.

“Because my son is very large for his age, he looks much older than he is. So people always expect him to act older and to have more skills than he does.”

You can’t help what people expect, or what they say. But you can help keep what they expect or what they say from hurting your toddler.

First of all, be quick to volunteer his age, particularly when those careless comments (“My, my—a big boy like you still in a diaper?”) start coming. Matter-of-factly set the record straight (“He’s actually only fifteen months—he’s just big for his age”), not for the edification of the thoughtless commenter, or even to save yourself some embarrassment, but for the preservation of your toddler’s self-esteem. Being constantly told that you’re not performing up to snuff can erode a tender ego.

Second of all, make sure you don’t get caught up in the same trap as these insensitive strangers. Sometimes parents, who on a conscious intellectual level are aware of the limitations their child’s age poses, subconsciously expect more. Or
weary of hearing “Why doesn’t he talk yet?” they may try to push their toddler beyond those limitations—to begin talking or walking or toilet-learning or giving up the stroller before he’s ready. Such pressure can bruise a child’s ego and impede his natural developmental progress; he’s less likely to attempt new skills if he senses that he’s already failed at them. So applaud your toddler for what he
can
do and provide the encouragement and support he needs to reach his full potential at each age and stage of development.

And most of all, get used to it. Sizable toddlers often grow into sizable children; your child may well have to face the inflated expectations of others for many years to come. If you learn not to take them personally, your son will probably follow your lead.

“Every time someone outside the immediate family approaches my daughter, she hides behind me. Isn’t this fear of strangers a little extreme?”

It isn’t extreme—it’s extremely appropriate, considering your child’s age. Her pronounced fear of strangers, which is known in the child development business as “stranger suspicion,” is very common during the toddler years. Unlike “stranger anxiety,” which many infants experience as they approach their first birthdays, stranger suspicion is a more rational fear—though it may not seem rational to you. It’s a kind of thinking child’s paranoia. Because your toddler is capable of more complex thoughts than she used to be, she’s also capable of more complex fears. During this suspicious time, every grown-up who isn’t Mommy or Daddy can be viewed as a potential threat: a neighbor, a sitter, a friend or associate of yours, even a once-accepted grandparent or other relative may receive the distrust treatment. While this fearful reaction may sometimes embarrass you and upset others (particularly those who are close to you), it’s actually not an altogether bad trait. In fact, if you think about it, knowing that your toddler won’t walk off with the first stranger who offers her a cookie should be somewhat comforting.

But fear probably isn’t the only thing that keeps your toddler hidden behind your legs in the face of strangers; there may be an element of annoyance, too. Consider how you might react towards a stranger, or someone you barely knew or recognized, who came right up to you, and without permission or hesitation, patted your head, pinched your cheek, tickled your tummy, hugged you, picked you up, or barraged you with silly questions? It’s likely that even for you, a grown-up with a highly developed sense of civility, a civil response would be difficult. For a toddler, whose exposure to the world of manners and courtesy has been limited, mustering a civil response to such an assault is often next to impossible.

There’s no magical cure for stranger suspicion, but it can be expected to eventually come to an end—sooner in some children, later in others. But since it’s impossible, as well as inadvisable, to shelter your toddler from other people completely while she grows out of her suspicious stage, try these tips. They may help her (and you) cope more effectively with it: