The Mom I Want to Be

For both you and your toddler, better communication means smoother sailing.

 

Once your toddler starts to use even a little language, everyone benefits. There is more accurate and pleasurable communication between the two of you, for one. More important, though is the feeling of mastery and control your child begins to have over his own impulsive life.

 

How It Works
At 21 months, Genny started saying “bye-bye?” with an upturned tone as she saw her parents preparing to leave for work. Before this skill, her face wrinkled up into a scowl just before tears melted her eyes; she ended the sequence with a piercing wail.

Now, with her words, she takes her parents’ departure more peacefully. Her questioning statement begs an answer and she usually gets one. Before speech, it was mostly guesswork about what she was thinking or feeling. Now, it’s as though she has become the boss of separations and departures – not her parents.

 

Impulse Control
Another place a child’s language is a huge help to parents is in helping children check some of their own impulses.

 

George loves to watch the wood-burning stove and listen to the crackling bark inside. The first time he said the word “hotuh!” was the morning after his father had stopped him on the way to touch the stove with an emphatic “Don’t touch, George! Hot!”

 

For three weeks after he had said his first “hotuh,” George played this game: in the mornings, when the stove was cool, he would reach out his hand walk toward it, sometimes looking to see who was watching. Then he’d say “hotuh!” and stop about two feet from the stove. He was controlling the frightening burning stove and his impulse to explore it. He learned how to do it, and he said the right word in the right way at the right time for it all to come together. George is using words – both their meaning and the act of speaking them – as a tool to control his behavior. He uses his words and his repeated approaches to the stove to drill home his father’s message that he must not touch. And he succeeds in stopping himself. This is how words are central to judgment and inhibiting behavior.

 

Understanding the World

Such rich processes are how children increasingly use language to make sense of their world and their experiences. Just think of all the social, cognitive, emotional, and cultural factors that went into George’s first “hotuh!” Never again is so large a portion of the brain’s resources devoted to the accumulation of language.