Your preschooler is probably pretty happy most of the time. But there are many things that can cause stress for your preschooler. She has so many new skills to juggle. The arrival of a new sibling, lack of a regular routine, illness, moving, vacation, change in caregivers, fear of the dark, and even too many planned activities can stress your preschooler.
2 Years 7 Months Girl
Two-and-a-half is the most unpredictable preschool age. She will shift from one extreme to the other without warning. This is not because she purposely wants to confuse you or irritate you or defy you. The reason for this changeability lies in a giant step she is taking in decision making.
She is discovering opposites and alternate choices. She understands yes and no, run and stop, take and give, come and go, etc. But now she cannot sort out the relative merits of these opposites for any particular situation. She is not yet capable of thinking of only one to the exclusion of the other.
Your two-year old’s brain is three-fourths the size of her adult brain. By five years of age it will be nearly full size. As her brain grows, structures involved in learning, memory, motor control, and other brain functions are being developed.
Right now she has trillions of neural pathways, double the number she will have as an adult. The more often a pathway is used, the stronger the connections are. The development of these pathways is influenced by how your toddler’s brain is used, the variety and richness of the environment she is exposed to, and also genetics. Routine and repetition cause the brain to strengthen the most important connections. Less used pathways are treated by the brain as less important. The pathways that are not used or only used infrequently, will wither away. This is a normal process called pruning.baby si
The key word for this age is “Again!” She may want to follow exactly the same routine day in and day out or wear the same clothes every day or eat the same foods. As irritating as this can be to live with, the repetition is providing your little one with a sense of stability and control. She is trying to make sense of her world. Once she figures out how something is supposed to work, she wants to do it over and over to make sure it happens that way every time. When she sees the same result, she is reassured and gains confidence. Rituals provide comfort.
Her walking is a smooth heel-to-toe motion, while her running is still a bit awkward and stiff. She still runs into things and knocks things over because she can’t turn corners well or stop quickly. She can stand on tiptoes to see and touch things that are a little above eye level. And she climbs on anything available to reach things up higher. Although she can get up quite high, she still has difficulty getting back down. She is now able to jump up getting both feet off the ground, although she only clears the floor by about an inch.
Because your child has mastered so many physical skills, she spends much more of her time and effort in learning how things work. She is curious about everything. She wants to know what it is, what it does, and how it works. She has to try it all out for herself. She can be incredibly determined to do things by herself. She is showing more independence every day and she is beginning to see herself as an individual capable of doing what she sets her mind on doing.