I’ve attached links to the four best “toddler songs” I could find: “The Greatest Discovery” by Elton John and Bernie Tauper, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” by Randy Newman as sung by 3-year-old Claire Crosby and her dad, “Hand to Hold” by J.J. Heller, and “This Little Light of Mine” — I couldn’t resist the Bruce Springsteen version.
We are a toddler beginning when we are as young as 12 months of age (maybe more like 15 or even 18 months) until about the time we turn 4. The toddler years are the years of our bounded self.
Beginning when we are between 4 and 9 months old, we become aware that our physical self is independent from other people’s and from our physical environment. Our sense of self becomes rooted in our body.
Beginning when we are between 15 and 24 months old, we become aware that our emotions are independent from other people’s and from our emotional environment.
And so our sense of self becomes rooted in our body and our emotions. And we now have a sense of our bounded self – our physically and emotionally bounded self.
We focus on our emotional needs for attention and care. To develop in a healthy manner, in the first 6 or 7 years of our life, we need to be adored, approved of, accepted, listened to, understood, and loved for who we really are.
By age 2, many toddlers are exclaiming “I did it!” after each feat — and almost all toddlers try to anticipate how others will evaluate their actions as they seek other people’s approval. By age 3, most toddlers are taking true pride in their achievements and experiencing true shame when they fail.
Our social development accelerates as we become more and more aware of other people’s emotions. With empathy, we can apprehend and even feel other people’s emotions.
As early as 12 months, an infant may try to cure another person’s stress or anguish with what comforts the infant when he or she is stressed or anguished. There is even a rudimentary friendship among one-year-olds, as one baby gets feedback from another baby. (One baby puts a towel over his or her head and the other baby laughs.)
By 18 months of age, coordinated and complementary interaction and play are common. Toddlers chase each other, receive and offer toys, and imitate each other, including imitating how the other toddler plays with a toy. Conflicts over toys are common, and toddlers slowly learn to share. By age 2, many toddlers are proficient at taking turns. But they still prefer toys to their peers.
By 2 years old, toddlers suffer emotional pain when separated from their favorite fellow toddlers, and they rejoice at reunions. By age 2 or 3, a toddler can take note of other people’s feelings and can respond. Many 3-year-olds understand that people are sad when they fail and happy when they succeed. A toddler will help another child who is hurt and will try to comfort another child who is sad.
By age 2-and-a-half, toddlers commonly engage in sustained attention, turn-taking, and mutual responsiveness with each other. By age 2-and-a-half to 3 years old, cooperative acting is common; toddlers take on roles and act in character. Mostly, toddlers toddle away and back, hug, laugh, climb on one another, and make sounds and funny faces — and take joy in just being together.
Each of us starts out life both amoral and egocentric. At first it is almost impossible for us to really understand life from someone else’s perspective.
As a toddler forms a separate self, there is a struggle to account for awareness of this duality. The “terrible twos” can involve aggression and self-centered power struggles. Toddlers may fear the survival of this self that they are newly-aware-of. They may be overwhelmed by internal conflict and by fears of, even paranoia about, the “other”. Impulses are the self, and the self is not yet strong enough to control those impulses.
A toddler’s will aspires to power over his or her material environment. Since they do not yet understand how nature works, they believe that they are omnipotent and that they can order the world around. Surely, they think, everything will follow their impulses and whims.
Toddlers have no shame, no guilt. A good person is one who is nice to them and does what they want. A bad person is one who is mean to them and doesn’t do what they want.
People who don’t learn the positive lessons of toddlerhood will grow up thinking that life is all about satisfying one’s self. Those who remain stuck at this stage of development impulsively act for their own direct personal benefit – regardless, at any cost, and without shame. They see the world as a jungle full of predators and threats. Dominate or be dominated, they think – exploit or be exploited. So they exert their strength and power and use aggression, conquest, coercion, force, and even violence to get what they want. They are adult toddlers.
Are we encountering a toddler from age one to three, with an independent physical and emotional self – a newly bounded self? Let’s give them plenty of attention and care, teach them to eat, show them how to really see and hear and perceive, and help them gain strength and dexterity with their hands and body. Let’s give them plenty of adoration, approval, and acceptance. Let’s listen to them, understand them, and love them for who they really are.
At the same time, without pontificating to them, let’s be firm. When they lie, for example, let’s simply say something like, “Who are you kidding? Now cut it out.”
And let’s teach them how to get along well with their peers. Let’s help them become aware of other people’s feelings and respond to them (like comforting another sad child), to be helpful, tender, and willing to share. And let’s help them be less demanding and hurtful and to learn how to settle conflicts without resorting to aggression.
Lastly, let’s read to them and tell them many stories. The templates of these stories will lay the groundwork for their shift from toddlerhood to childhood.
“The Greatest Discovery” by Elton John and Bernie Taubin (with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” by Randy Newman, sung by 3-year-old Claire Crosby and her dad
This is cute. The number one toddler song Johnny Johnny is missing.