I was less prepared for raising a toddler than I was for a baby. In retrospect, what happened was once my wife was pregnant, I got on the program and tried to be a supportive, informed, and responsible partner; I read some books, chatted with other parents, chatted with my wife a lot, and basically had some sense of what we were getting into by the time our first-born arrived. Of course, the reality of having your first child can only truly be understood once you’re living it.
I know that some parents of babies feel a bit ambivalent about when their child first start toddling around because, you know, we have to become more active and alert to care for them. I didn’t feel that way. I was ready for more movement, more running around. What I wasn’t ready for were the emotional changes, the willfulness, the first “steps” toward independence. I guess I was so immersed in being a hands-on parent, I didn’t think to look ahead and get some perspective on what was in the pipeline. I knew about the terrible twos by reputation, but I really didn’t have a meaningful understanding of the toddler phase–and it took me a long while to adjust.
But, you know, I’m also a journalist, and when I explained my situation to a fellow editor, he recommended that I read a story on understanding toddlers, and the big find in that story was an amazing person named Alicia Lieberman, one of the giants in child development and a professor in infant mental health at the University of California, San Francisco.
I remember our conversation like it was yesterday; it felt like she connected all the dots for me between a child’s new mobility and their new desires and brain development–and how to respond to all that as a parent.
If you too would like to understand your toddler better–or be better prepared than I was, if that’s the case–Dr. Lieberman distilled all her wisdom in a book called, The Emotional Life of the Toddler.
