Toddler Girls
A friend of mine is the single mother of one adorable little girl who is three. At least, she was adorable up until recently. Then her mother found that things were getting out of control.
What made it especially hard is that Susan works and doesn’t have a support system for every night that she goes home. That means getting off work, picking up her daughter at daycare, then going home to make supper, clean up, all that fun stuff you wish would go away at the end of a long day. And on top of it, she’s suddenly found she has a demanding toddler on her hands.
It’s not that Cassie is insecure, but she clings and whines and then cries, so by the time dinner is ready they are both upset. The little time that they had together at the end of the day was being spoiled by a clash of wills and needs, as in need to eat and need to get work done along with the need to connect for both of them.
So for a while she planned very simple dinners that took little preparation, and gradually eased Cassie into a routine of sitting at the table with a coloring book or other special toys reserved for that time, and talking. Not that she always stayed there. Sometimes it was ten minutes and she was off to the toy chest. But she learned that her mother was available if she wanted her, and that security made them both a lot happier. That made the times when they could sit down together to do things like shopping for new clothes a lot more fun.
