Advice for Keeping up with your Energetic Toddler

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Raising an energetic toddler : tips and tricks

 

Awhile back I was trying to come up with some posts to write for the blog when I decided to do what any good reader typically does when there is a block:  pose some questions on social media.

I asked my reliable friends, of which are most parents themselves, what kind of topics they want to see covered by the Corpus Christi Mom’s Blog. I found out that many of my friends my age are experiencing the same issues and have children around the same age, meaning that a lot of us are in the throws of the terrible two’s, threenager, four going on forty, and five teen experiences. Yes, toddlerhood is such a special time that requires so much patience and even more energy and sometimes you feel burnt out. But man, can we just talk about how to keep up with an energetic toddler?

So, that is what I decided to do some research on, because I thought this could not only help our readers, but also myself as well since my son has hit two years old at a speed of a freight train. Here is what I have found from the depths of parent advice blogs, medical journals, and from my own mom who has full-grown children reminiscing about the past. 

Learn the basics of their development will help understand your energetic toddler

In my perusing of another article posted by mother.ly I found this tidbit of advice pretty helpful: learn the basics of toddler development. Basically, this helps parents out two-fold. One, you understand the way your energetic toddler is developing, noticing that unlike adults, toddlers do not have certain capabilities and have a long way to go with understanding things that we may do. This helps us to be more patient and less frustrated when communicating or attempting to communicate with our children, and can help us notice when it is time to play, and when it is time to move on to something else. Secondly, knowing where you child is in terms of development can also help you figure out what is appropriate play and what is not.

Appropriate play means doing activities that actually help them with cognitive understanding versus playing for the sake of playing.

There are many articles and journals that speak more about development and keeping up with this knowledge can be beneficial in the long run. 

Know when to play and when to lay 

I was happily surprised to see that in addition to the mother.ly website, there is a fatherly website that shares parenting articles for any dads out there who want words of advice from their own tribe (although I do not believe these sites are related, but I could be wrong). Anyway, a common theme amongst both sites is the sentiment that knowing when it is time to play and when it is time to nap is crucial in getting your energetic toddler to calm down (for a bit). The best way to do this is to keep up with a daily routine. Now, we all know that this can be really hard if you have schedules that are stretched thin. Maybe you are a working parent, maybe you or not, or maybe your child attends a daycare/mother’s day out program, and maybe not, but the thought process is that wherever your child may be during the day, that they have a consistent schedule. So, figuring out your own routine helps in establishing a routine for them. Do you get up and immediately take them to daycare? Make sure you get to know their schedule and see when nap time happens and what activities they do. Stay in the know so that way you can adapt your routine to theirs and vice versa (if possible). 

Get some fresh air 

These last two pieces of advice come from my own mother, who I now see is pretty much a genius when it comes to child rearing. When I asked her how she handled two energetic toddlers without the technology we have today (I think we had a television but it had three channels only) and no Youtube videos, books, magazines, etc. she points to one of her greatest assistants: the outside.

Yes, taking your child outdoors and getting them Vitamin D the natural way can in fact help tire them out. 

Let them be

The last piece of advice I got from my mom has been passed down from generation to generation and is an iron clad family secret tool of parental success: let them be.

My grandma would tell my mom this when my brother and I were young and we had sauntered into another room away from them, and basically she would say

“dejalos jugar (let them play)..they are being quiet.” 

What this meant was that it was okay for my mother not to be at our every beck and call and that walking away sometimes was fine. If we were quiet and playing by ourselves, then she should just let us be. 

More than anything, friends, take a moment and always try to ENJOY your energetic toddler – they won’t be this age for long.