Toddler

Page 2: Mystery #3 - Your toddler believes in back-to-basics fashion: the bare naked look.
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Two-year-old Callie Phelps of Mission, BC, has taken to ditching her diaper with such single-minded determination that her mother, Tina, has to duct-tape it on at bedtime. And judging by what I’ve heard from other parents, she’s not the only Canadian tot who is a big fan of minimalist fashion.

Why shouldn’t kids buy into the less-is-more look? “Sometimes it’s a simple fact of being able to take the clothes off on their own,” says Cathy Kerr. “They want to do it because they can do it. And sometimes it’s not wanting to be stuck in clothing that may be uncomfortable or confining.” (I’m suddenly having flashbacks to my saggy leotards and itchy velvet party dress, circa 1970!) So rather than getting your own shorts in a knot over your toddler’s garb, cut her a bit of slack. Unless she’s determined to try her streaking routine in the middle of a February blizzard, there’s little cause for concern.

Mystery #4 - Your toddler loves a food one day, then hates it the next.

If there’s a Murphy’s Law of Toddlerhood, it goes something like this: The odds of your child liking a food are inversely proportional to the amount that you happen to have on hand. So if you loaded up on cream cheese or cauliflower because she loved it last week, you can pretty much bet she’ll hate it this week.

It’s a law that Jennifer Henderson of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, is all too familiar with. “I have five pounds of bananas on my counter turning brown as we speak because my little banana-eating machine – my two-year-old daughter, Clare, who averaged four to five bananas per day – suddenly won’t touch them!”

According to Kerr, these gastronomic flip-flops can be triggered by a change in appetite or a change in mood. Or they may indicate a garden variety control issue – always a distinct possibility with the toddler crowd. Your best bet is to play it cool and casually reintroduce the food in a couple of weeks’ time. Who knows? Maybe it will find its way back on the “most favoured” list again.

Mystery #5 - Your toddler loves the box more than the toy.

Jill Chongva’s 2½-year-old son, Brodie, and 16-month-old daughter, MacKenzie, are big fans of boxes – such big fans, in fact, that the Berwick, Nova Scotia, mother jokingly told friends and family members that she was giving her kids boxes rather than toys for Christmas last year.

Don’t underestimate the sheer sensory delight in playing with a box, explains Kerr: “Just think about how it smells, how it feels and the wonderful noise it makes as you open and close the flaps.” And then there’s the joy that comes from putting things in the box and dumping them out. So save your money and relish this stage when a child can be entertained by something so simple.

Originally published in Today's Parent, December 2003