Information on Cautions for Your Two Year Old

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Cautions for your Two Year Old

Your two-year-old is as intensely curious about the world around her as she waslast year, but her methods of gathering and processing information are now moresophisticated. At this point she should be moving well beyond random touching,grabbing, banging, and gumming everything in sight. Instead, her efforts will be-come more focused and purposeful as she spends more time manipulating ob-iects with her mind as well as her hands.

As this year progresses, she will be able to switch toys on and off; put togethersimple puzzles; and match objects by size, shape, and color. Her expanding mem-ory will allow her to understand both time sequences ("This happens beforethat") and cause-and-effect relationships ("If I push this, it falls over") and to ap-ply them to new situations. This does not, unfortunately, give you much breath-ing room for safety concerns, especially at the beginning of this year. While shecan understand more sophisticated prohibitions ("Don't chase your ball into thestreet"), her impulse control and judgment have a long way to grow. She also isunlikely to comprehend the ultimate risks of violating your warnings. To makematters worse, if she's in a limit-challenging mood, she may decide to create acontest over one of your safety rules. Therefore, constant vigilance must be maintained throughout the next several months and years, with particular attentionto the following areas:

Traffic hazards. Because she can run inure swiftly and dart into the nearest street.she must be monitored at all times when she is in an area where there are no bar-riers separating her from traffic.

Harmful substances. Medications must remain completely inaccessible, espe-cially if they happen to be liquid and pleasantly flavored. Not only is she moreskillful with the use of her hands, but her pretending games or imitation—newand important behaviors at this age—may include scenarios of playing doctoror taking medicines to get well. Make sure you have a fresh supply of ipecac touse if instructed to do so, in case of an accidental ingestion of medication.

Car-seat struggles. She may become more vocal in protesting the use of her carseat, or she may actually figure out how to get out of it at some choice moment.Don't give an inch on your insistence that the seat be used for every ride in thecar, no matter how short.

Dangerous "grown-up toys." Never underestimate her ingenuity in getting her
hands on appliances, tools, or other hardware that she has seen you use.Imitation may come into play here as well.
The bathtub. She is still too young to be left in a bathtub unsupervised. Thephysical prowess that now makes shallow water seem less hazardous also en-ables her to turn on the faucet, leading to a possible scalding injury or even anoverflowing tub. (Lowering the temperature of your water heater below 120°Fwill reduce the risk of this type of injury.) She might also decide to see whathappens when she jumps up and down in the water—and in so doing, slip andfall.

Water hazards. Nonstop watchfulness is an absolute necessity whenever yourtwo-year-old is near a swimming pool or any other body of water. Curiosityis abundant and caution scarce at this age, and a child can make a beeline to-ward a body of water in just a few moments while you are distracted withsomething else. If you have a pool at home, it is essential that a fence with achildproof gate surrounds it. A spa or hot tub must be covered when not inuse. If your child is playing in water, she must be observed by a responsibleindividual—ideally by someone who is in the water with her—at all times.

Do not rely on inner tubes, water wings, or other flotation devices to keepyour child safe.
Sibling skirmishes. Be on the lookout for impending aggression toward siblings,both older and younger. Whether or not your two-year-old is the one who initi-ates the conflict, her ability to inflict damage is ever increasing.

Imitations and Attitudes

One of the fascinating developments of a two-year-old's emerging intellect is thecapacity for imitation, role playing, and make-believe. Watch her be a mommy toone of her dolls or pretend to drive her toy car around the carpet or collect someof her animals into a miniature zoo, and you can learn a lot about what she'sthinking.
A normal and important component of this phase is imitating parents, es-pecially the one of the same gender. Listen to her give an exhortation to her fa-vorite stuffed animal, and you may hear words, phrases, and even vocalinflections that sound amazingly familiar. You may even see a little mirror of!ourself in a young child's stride or in her hand gestures. This imitation is, in fact,normal and healthy—provided, of course, that what your child sees is worthcopying. Remember that the little computer is always on, and now the data go-ing into the memory banks isn't just the names of objects around the house.Character traits that are on display at home—whether respect, courtesy, stability,and love, or their opposites—are all being watched and assimilated, no matterwho is modeling them.

Parents often wonder whether they should try to influence the type of roleplaying their child carries out. In bygone generations some might have fussedand fumed, usually in vain, if Johnny played house and Susie pretended to bea train engineer. Today some cultural forces push parents and preschools—with equal fervor and futility—to keep children "gender neutral" in their playroles. In fact, at this age kids will gravitate toward the types of toys and playactivities they find interesting, no matter what you do. Later on, however,there may be some potential concerns regarding play patterns and sexual iden-tity.
You should monitor more closely the attitudes that are being manifested inthe pretending. Are you generally seeing and hearing pleasant themes and varia-tions on your family's activities and interests? Or are you noticing some disturb-ing trends, focusing more on violence and destruction? If you don't like whatyou're seeing, you may want to take stock of the material to which your two-year-old is exposed.

This is the time to become particularly attentive to the role of television inyour child's life, not to mention your own. A year ago your walking baby didn'tshow much sustained interest in the tube. But two-year-olds can become capti-vated by the stories and images they see on the flickering screen and by age threecan become TV addicts. Furthermore, a huge variation exists in the quality andappropriateness of network and cable programming geared toward children.While you may find material that is nourishing to your child's mind and heart,far too much children's TV is deplorable—violent, occultic, manipulative, dumb,and dumber. Many classic filmsfor children are far too intense for two- or three-year-olds. Without being para-noid or overly legalistic, now is the time to get a firm grip on what you allow intoyour home and your child's mind.

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