What to Expect the Toddler Years (18 page)

The effect on your spousal relationship.
Breastfeeding that continues well into the second year, especially if it’s taking place in your bed, can easily come between you and your spouse. Besides making spousal intimacy inconvenient at best, it may, on a subconscious level satisfy both emotional and physical needs for closeness, diminishing your interest in sex. Your refusal to wean can also be interpreted by your spouse as a way of saying that your toddler is more important to you. (Remember, your spouse is yours for life. Your toddler will grow up, leave home, and eventually find a partner of his own. Save some nurturing for your partner. See page 771.)

“I used to rely on the playyard to keep my son safe and happy while I did some things around the house. Now every time I put him in there he screams to come out.”

To a newly mobile toddler, eager to explore and discover, being relegated to the play yard is like being sentenced to prison—it’s no wonder he screams for his freedom. So give it to him. Of course, to do this, you will have to toddler-proof at least one room in your home (and preferably the entire home; see page 622). But even in a toddler-proof setting, you will have to increase your surveillance, providing the supervision that the playyard once did. In other words, with more freedom for him, there will be less freedom for you.

If you find it difficult to get your work done with your toddler on the loose, consider tackling tasks when he’s napping or when someone else is on guard duty. (See page 830 for more tips on keeping your toddler busy while you get things done.)

“The only time my daughter naps is when she’s in the stroller or the car. Not only don’t these brief naps give her enough rest, they don’t allow me to get anything done while she sleeps.”

Cat naps may be fine for feline moms and their kittens, but they tend not to do the trick for their human counterparts. The average one-year-old isn’t able to fill her sleep requirements at night and generally needs two naps of approximately an hour each during the day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. However, a small percentage of toddlers, much to their parents’ dismay, manage very well with a few fifteen-minute snoozes interspersed throughout the day, a few need only one nap, and a few need naps much longer than average.

When children don’t get all the shut-eye their bodies need, they are often crankier, more irritable, and more easily frustrated by life’s challenges. And their parents, who need the respite their child’s nap offers, may also be crankier, more irritable, and more easily frustrated, too.

It isn’t easy to nip a cat-napper’s habit; sometimes it’s impossible. But you have nothing to lose by trying. The following tips may help:

Start each day at the same time. Waking your toddler up at the same time each morning may prompt her to tire at about the same time each afternoon. (See page 143 for suggestions on how to regulate morning waking.)

End each day at the same time. Erratic bedtimes can lead to erratic napping patterns. Training your toddler to be tired at particular times during the day requires regulating her sleep.

Head off exhaustion. Some children become so excited over their new mobility and the opportunities that come with it, that they’re reluctant to stop for a rest. Overdoing so overtires that they can’t fall asleep easily. Try to keep your toddler from reaching that point. Periodically, encourage her to break from her more-active activities for some less-active ones (drawing, block building, story time)—particularly during the half hour or so before you’d like her to nap.

Pick a sleepy time. Examine your toddler’s energy pattern during the day to discover when she seems at low ebb and therefore most likely to be able to fall
asleep. For most toddlers, this will be the early afternoon.

Create a sleepy mood. Begin developing a nap time routine just as you would a bedtime routine. Start with a soporific snack (milk and a couple of fruit-juice-sweetened cookies or crackers). Then dim her room (install room-darkening shades, if necessary), and in the soft light of a lamp, read her a quiet story or two. With tranquil music playing in the background, tuck her into her crib, sing a lullabye, whisper a few comforting words to her (and a prayer to yourself), and quietly withdraw before the spell is broken. Even if she doesn’t fall asleep at all the first few times, stick to this routine for at least a week or two before you give up. She may come to accept the ritual and may eventually learn to fall asleep on cue. Or she may be happy just to rest quietly for twenty minutes or half an hour.

Ease the separation anxiety that nap-time may cause. The separation from you that sleep represents may be one reason why your toddler fights her naps. So in addition to her favorite comfort objects, give her a little piece of “you” to take to bed with her: a sweater, T-shirt, or sweat shirt that you wear during the nap time story and then turn over to her, or a pillow or quilt from your bed can be the next best thing to having you next to her in the crib.

If you can’t beat her, join her. If you simply can’t get your toddler to sleep in her crib, try to get her to sleep longer in the stroller by pushing it for an hour outdoors (many stroller nappers wake up the minute you step into a store or other indoor space). This approach may not only extend her naps but it will give you a healthy dose of daily aerobic exercise (particularly if you keep up a good pace). Of course, you won’t be able to get anything else done, but chores should be somewhat less difficult to accomplish later on, with a more rested child about the house.

“I’ve heard other one-year-olds saying real words, but my son really doesn’t say anything anyone can understand.”

Just because you can’t
understand
a word your toddler is saying doesn’t mean he isn’t
saying
a word. Speech needn’t be intelligible to count as legitimate language development, particularly at this tender age, and even well into the second year.

Children use two kinds of “practice” language. One sounds like gibberish, but is actually referred to as “jargon” by professionals. A toddler’s jargon may not sound like the parent tongue to parents, but it does to the toddler who utters it. Listen carefully to your child when he rambles on in this seemingly meaningless way, and you’ll probably notice that his gibberish has the same rhythmic patterns and inflections as spoken English. Speaking jargon satisfies a toddler’s need to have an adult-like conversation (at least to his ear), even with his limited linguistic abilities.

The other kind of practice speech young toddlers use consists of single-or double-syllable sounds. Usually these sounds take on meaning for the child long before his parents have broken the code. “Ba” may mean bottle, “uh” up, “da” that. At first, single syllables may also stand for complete thoughts. For example, “Da” could mean “Give me that” or “What is that?” The first intelligible words may also be multipurpose. “Da-da” may mean Daddy, but it might also be used to call Mommy, the baby-sitter, even the dog. “Ma-ma” could, at different times, mean, “I want Mama,” “That is Mama,” “Feed me, Mama,” or “Pick me up, Mama.”