The “Terrible Twos” is a phase that a child goes through that usually begins after turning one.  It peaks at the age 18 months and can last up until a child turns three.  There are essentially two reasons why it occurs:

1. In the second year, most children gain mobility and with mobility comes freedom and independence.  A child of that age begins to assert himself - he’s testing boundaries by pushing limits and seeing how far he can go before his parents reign him in.  It is also frustrating for him to be met with “no” on a constant basis when previously everything he wanted to do was encouraged.  Think about how we encourage our infants to crawl, to walk, to learn through exploration and to speak.  Suddenly, we’re telling them to stop touching things, that there are places they can’t go and we’re telling them to be quiet.  Now that’s got to be pretty confusing to a toddler.
2. In the second year, most children are still unable to communicate their needs and desires effectively and the inability to articulate themselves is intensely frustrating.  Think of how you would feel in a country with a foreign language you don’t speak and you cannot tell anyone what you need because they don’t understand you.  That’s exactly how a toddler feels but a toddler hasn’t the ability to reason and being understanding about it so it’s even worse for him. 

To manage the first, it is important to give your toddler a lot of warning before something is about to happen.  Just because he’s a child with a short attention span doesn’t mean he hasn’t got any feelings.  Particularly when I know I’m about to do something he won’t like, I make sure I tell him.  I learned my lesson the hard way when I tried to sneak off without telling him and I’ve come to realise that honesty really is the best policy especially when it comes to your toddler.

As for the “nos” we have to say when our toddlers get into the cutlery drawer, attempt to play with the power sockets, trying to jump into the pond, etc.  I’m afraid there’s not much you can do to avoid these frustrations, however, I usually find that the concern and fear in my voice is enough to make him realise I’m doing it for his own good.  I occasionally have to deal with a screaming and howling toddler, but the episodes are lessening somewhat.

With regards to frustrations due to the inability to articulate their wants and needs, teaching Gavin sign language has really helped me a lot.  For instance, he can sign “shoes” to tell me something about his shoes is bothering him otherwise I wouldn’t know why he was being fussy. 

Then there was the other day when he wanted to watch “Finding Nemo”.  He started fussing and crying but I didn’t know why.  Although I was a little slow on the uptake, I eventually noticed that he was signing “fish” and immediately realised that he wanted to watch “Finding Nemo”.  Now if he hadn’t been able to sign “fish”, who knows how long that little tantrum would have persisted.

The other sign he often uses is “train”.  Thomas is currently his favourite toy and he often wants his Thomas book and train.  He has got quite a number of words in his repertoire and he copies what we say occasionally, but his speech is still limited and signing still plays an important role to help us understand what he wants.

Teaching Gavin how to sign has a number of benefits:

• it provides him with a means of communication when he lacks the words to express himself verbally
• it helps train his motor coordination
• it trains his observation skills
• it offers us an entertaining game to play in the car
• it has made me more observant to his cues as I try to understand what he wants

For any parent wondering about whether to teach their infants sign language - I highly recommend it.  You can start as early as four months and keep persisting with it even if you don’t see any results.  When your child starts signing back, you will be amazed by how much was picked up by your child.

These tips may not resolve all your Terrible Twos problems but it will certainly help lessen the pain of it.

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