When Nicholas was born we ended up with a flyer called Building Block to Heathy Social / Emotional Development. It offers suggestions on how to help your kids succeed from birth to age 5. I have had it posten on my fridge, and just this morning I took the opportunity to read the "Ages 2 - 3" section, since Nick will be 2 in a little over a month.

Let me just say that most of these suggestions are good ones, but they are not always practical. For example, in the "Birth to One Year" section it states that Holding a baby will not spoil him, which is something I happen to agree with. But it doesn't tell you how to make a meatloaf while holding the baby.

In the Ages 2 - 3 section there were a couple of items that, again, I agree with, but don't seem to be working. The first is Temper tantrums are normal - stay calm. I assume by "Stay Calm" they mean "please do not place your child in the dryer or send him to play in a busy street." Great. But what would have been MORE helpful would be tricks to either avoid tantrums or end them. Nicholas has tantrums because he wants something and when he tells us we give him blank looks because we have no idea what "gada gook don" means, and obviously our guesses are far off the mark. Once he starts throwing sip cups and has melted into a puddle of goo on the floor, screaming and crying and kicking out at us, how do we figure out what it is he wants?

Another suggestion this flyer has for Nick's soon-to-be age range is "Offer your child two choices of food and clothes." I'm all over this. When we go to the grocery store and I say "Which cart should we get?" expecting him to go for the ones with the ride-in-cars, he picks the automated ones for people who need help getting around the store. When I pick two shirts and ask "Which shirt, this one, or this one?" he looks at me and says "no." "Do you want Macaroni or balogna?" his answer is "Yes." The doesn't understand the CONCEPT of choice. So for now, I go through the motions. I pick two shirts knowing he will say no and I will choose for him. I pick two books knowing he will want them both and then add three more. And I pick what we have for dinner because, let's face it, it won't matter to him.