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

Dr Pamela Douglas16th of Sep 202312th of Sep 2024

stand up paddle boarder in ocean

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!

surfer falling off surfboard

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.

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Next up in the dial on your toddler's nervous system

You know your toddler best (even if it doesn't feel like it!)

asian family playing outside on the street

As a parent or primary carer, you know your own small child better than anyone else. You are the one who is listening to and responding as best you can to your toddler, day and night!

Parents do a lot of experimenting. This is a great strength. You are likely to find yourself trying out something that has been suggested, to see if it works for you and your own unique child. If it doesn't seem to work, you'll give that a miss after a while and try something else.

That's how I suggest you use The Possums Sleep Program. Some ideas you find in here might not seem relevant to you and your family, and you'll decide not to try them. Other things you'll experiment with for a time. Sometimes, certain strategies seem to work for a while, but then they stop...

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