I avoid confusing phrases once I’ve learned that the phrases confuse the children. So for this child, I would have “put” and I would have “trash”. And as I pointed to something or handed them something I would either say “put” or “trash”. Clearly, the word “away” is presenting a challenge to them that is making this more difficult than it needs to be at this time in their life. Later on we can work on multi word phrases, maybe closer to 1 1/2 or two. Right now, one word.
I like to play a game I call toddler fetch. You throw a ball, and then they go fetch it and bring it back to you, and then you throw it again. You can use a soft inside ball to do that.
Another game I like to play involves them running back and forth across your field of vision, and you have a ball, and your goal is to hit them as they run back-and-forth. This is usually a soft ball, and an indoor activity, and you need to be intentionally bad at hitting them because the whole point is to get them to run back-and-forth and get tired. I play this particular game while sitting down, when I’m tired myself.
As a non-verbal crawler, they can still do a version of toddler fetch which is more like crawler fetch. Since they are crawling they will have to dribble - think soccer - the ball back to you instead of simply bringing it as would happen in toddler fetch. While you can explain the rules, it does help to just simply get excited when they bring the ball back and they figure that out really fast.
Slice the homework into small chunks and allow her to alternate: bit of homework - play for a short period of time (15 mins? 5 mins?) - bit of homework - play for a short period of time
It seems like this proposal will make the completion of homework take more time than sitting down and doing it one go, but if you add in the procrastination and struggle of sitting down and doing it in one go, this is actually shorter in time frame.
My chid is too young to have a phone but I’m a career nanny with experience. You’ve tried the rudeness angle and it isn’t sticking, so let me ask some questions:
Do you put a Call to Action in your texts? Something like, “Reply with a 👍 to let me know you received this.”? She’s still a child so as adults we do still have to do some of the executive load lifting.
When you ask her what the barrier is to her replies, what does she report? Is she falling prey to the, “I’ll do it in a minute,” thing which never happens because you never do it in a minute? If so, can you mentor her through realizing that such an inclination is a lie and what to do instead?
Some of this yes. Some of this no.
Every arm and leg wiggle, every eye blink, every coo and fart and startle.
This is the no. First of all, at this phase the child is a synesthete. The arm and leg wiggles are not communication but stimulus response. Espying the color red may be why the leg wiggled. While delightful to a parent, don’t make more of it than it is.
Also, they cannot coo at this stage. You may have confused the social smiling/cooing phase for what the OP is commenting on. The OP is referring to far earlier in development.
The startles are reflexive. The Morrow reflex. It is also not communication. It is just an instinct hardwired in to a primate brain to prevent newborn death by putting the primate newborn in a position to grab on to an adult’s body fur and thus prevent falling to their death.
I find this phase personally delightful because you get to see the human BIOS on which their person operating system is shortly to be installed, but it is absolutely okay for people not to, just like some computer enthusiasts love a BIOS and others don’t. So long as one isn’t neglectful, it is okay to not be enthralled.
She is amazing and I love her so much, but she’s boring! … How do you feel?
You aren’t wrong. And so many people will come for you with pitchforks and torches for having said so. But you aren’t wrong. Before ~ 6 weeks when they get social smiling, they really are potatoes that you care for. They have lots of amazing development going on inside, but on the outside you water, fertilize, give sunlight, and weed your potato and your potato … sits there.
I actually call this The Grub Phase because they remind me of grubs: eating, eliminating waste, growing, leaking fluids in weird ways (not that this stops, mind you, a common statement exiting my lips at the toddler stage is, “Why are you sticky?”), and wriggling/writhing but mostly not going anywhere.
What’s your favorite stage of child development?
I love the lying phase which occurs between 5 and 7 on average. It is also the boundary testing phase. I love seeing what children think might be possible. They sometimes have the freedom of unconstrained creativity to come up with some solutions that are possible and while inelegant are a fresh new approach to problems. Of course, the payment for all of this delight is dealing with all of their sassy pushback on everything and sometimes undetectable lies due to their plausability, but it is worth it IMHO.
Thanks for letting me know. I’m obviously a novice in this area.
Me too! The internet is amazing!
PM me and let’s exchange some details.
PM sent. :)
Sadly, no one has. Apparently the venn diagram of those who know how to 3D model and those who like this bento box have no overlap.
Where I live they also don’t encourage loose garbage or even garbage in loosely tied or untied bags. The reason here is that uncontained garbage subjected to a brisk wind, which we have plenty of, becomes litter. And no one wants to award themselves a ZeroWaste badge when they are directly contributing to landscape litter.
Dinner means night. Surely the child won’t be awake for 6 hours. You will likely do toddler dinner then bed time routine and then they will be asleep. Ask to go over a day early to shadow the bedtime routine.