Experimenting is your secret strength when you're caring for a toddler

The capacity to experiment your way through life with your small child is a great strength. The psychological research tells us that people who can be flexible in their responses to life, trying one thing, trying another, are more resilient to life’s challenges.

You'll be constantly experimenting with responses to your toddler's communications and behaviours, and constantly experimenting with ways to meet your toddler's sensory motor needs.

To navigate a river on a paddleboard or in a canoe, or to surf the ocean waves, we're adapting all the time to the swell and movement of the water beneath us. We're repeatedly shifting our weight, adjusting our posture.

Caring for a toddler is much like this. We respond, we experiment, we adjust. Some days everything seems reasonably easy. Some days the water is choppy or there's heavy surf and it's very hard going. Sometimes what we try doesn’t work and we fall right off into the water. We get back on and try again.

And again.

That's the nature of experimenting, when we're caring for a small child! Constantly problem solving, constantly checking out new ideas to see what feels right, at least for now.

You could call it The Great Muddling Through!

Recommended resources

I recommend the program Tuning into Toddlers Online (TOTOL), by Professor Sophie Havighurst and her team at Mindful, The University of Melbourne, Australia, if you're interested in learning more about shaping your toddler's behaviours in a way that keeps emotional connection strong. You can find out more here.

Selected references

Gottman JM, Katz IF, Hooven C. Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology. 1996;10:243-268.

Havighurst SS, Kehoe CE, Harley AE. Tuning in to Toddlers: Research protocol and recruitment for evaluation of an emotion socialization program for parents of toddlers. Frontiers in Psychology. 2019;10(1054):doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01054.

Havighurst SS, Kehoe CE, Harley AE, Thomas R. A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program and its impact on parenting, children’s behavior and parent and child stress cortisol: Tuning in to Toddlers. Behavior Research and Therapy. 2022;149:104016.

Johnson AM, Hawes DJ, Eisenberg N. Emotion socialization and child conduct problems: a comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review. 2017;54:65-80.