Build self-esteem and self-confidence. Strengthen rapport with peers. Increase empathy, sensitivity, the whole package of emotional connectedness. All these you can do by simply exposing your child to other children. Expose them early and they will be less jumpy, frightened, or angry when strangers are near. Train them well enough to recognise whom to trust and whom to be careful around and you help establish a child’s stable sense of self in relation to others. Lock the child away, limit his playtime with other children or interactions with people, and you just might be planting the seeds of paranoid behaviour and insecurity in him.

When it comes to teaching your child to relate with others, they are no different from any other warm-blooded mammal that roams the earth. They need to interact, to mingle, to develop their relational skills in order to lead healthy and emotionally satisfying lives. It is a world where one is constantly in contact with another, where one needs to be relating to others, transacting business with others, merely co-existing with other people. The sooner you start your children on the journey of discovering not only their inner traits but their abilities to reach out and communicate with others, the better you equip them to deal with what we would like to call the “real” world, aka life-on-your-own.

So savour those invites from pre-school or kindergarten, as well as those from the local government, as when our local city hall sent letters to all 5-year olds (children born in 2002) to join in the annual tree-planting on the outskirts of the city. It was an excellent opportunity to not only have our son mingle with children his age (he did run into some of his classmates from school while lugging around his shovel), but to also support the natural instinct of the child to want to nurture a life into fruition. Play time was not as fun as this when I was 5; I was busy shimmying up the neighbors’ trees instead and getting chased out of backyards.

Two-year-olds have many ways of testing their parents. My husband and I handle on average about two tantrums per day with our son (most are due to the need of a nap). The ones I usually handle alone are in a store because I have dared to go out with him and my 6 month old daughter.
One such tantrum happened today in a store. My son wouldn’t stay by the stroller with me as I had asked him to do, so I told him that if he didn’t stay by me we would have to leave. He strayed off again and got a second warning. The third time I gathered him up and told him we were going home – and we did. Of course he cried on the way out and people stared, but my son learned that I meant what I said and that I was going to go through with my warning.

It’s very tempting to threaten and threaten and not follow through because I need to get shopping done or finish whatever I’m doing, but I know it’s more important to follow through with my threat because my children will learn that I mean what I say. If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, whether it’s leave a store or take away a privilege or toy for a while as a punishment, your child will learn that you aren’t going to actually do what you say you’re going to do. So, why would he or she obey you when you’re full of empty threats?

As inconvenient and frustrating as it is to leave a store in the middle of something, you need to teach your child that you will do what you say. It should only take a few times before your child realizes that you will really follow through and then they will start to listen so that they don’t lose a privilege or have to leave a store.

Remember, leaving somewhere with a screaming, crying toddler is not fun but, despite the many stares, you have to remind yourself that this is preventing future behavior problems and is really best for your future sanity!