Symbolic Expression As Your Toddler Grows Up

The lessons mastered by your child during this developmental stage will be refined again and again in the coming years. His new ability to form and to hold mental images in his mind will help him understand where things are in relationship to each other in physical space. This will stand him in good stead when he plays in the block corner at nursery school and later on when he's passing the soccer ball to another midfielder. Later still, his ability to calculate RBIs and ERAs will be supported by his skill at mentally storing and manipulating numbers in his head.

His pleasure in symbolic expression will deepen with the years. When he's three years old and begins to move from parallel play to cooperative play with two or three other toddlers, the themes he spins out will have their roots in the imitative and pretend-play sessions the two of you have shared. His skill at staging make-believe games will expand, and before too long he'll discover that other children can act as supporting players in his dramas. He can try on different roles for size as he interacts with his play-group buddies. As they play house he can pretend to be Mommy or Daddy for a while, or be a big bad wolf coming to blow the place down! Your child's delight in dramatic expression will continue to grow as he matures, although he may wind up preferring to applaud from the sidelines rather than be in the spotlight himself.

Your toddler's ease in using words to express himself will grow in amazing ways in the years ahead. You'll probably first introduce him to the catchy rhythms of nursery rhymes, and the colorful images evoked by those simple words will no doubt stay etched in his memory for the rest of his life. Later on, your toddler will recognize some of his own yearnings and fears in the fairy tales you read together.

Clearly, then, your role in fostering your child's comfort with symbolic expression is highly significant and continues far beyond the toddler years. Sadly, many of the adults we see in our therapeutic practice seem to be unable to carry within themselves a soothing, nurturing image that gives them a sense of security. Others are locked into rigid patterns of behavior because they have difficulty using words to label and understand their feelings. They feel compelled to act out aggressively because they literally cannot think about their emotions. The more practice your toddler receives now in separating his thoughts from his actions, the more nuanced and flexible his thinking will be as an adult.

Developing a Symbolic Sense of Self
Now that your two- or three-year old can create ideas on his own, he's at the threshold of a new level of awareness and consciousness. Because he can hold multisensory images in his mind, his sense of who and what he is, is becoming more complex. He has a new awareness of himself as a talker, shmoozer, play actor, and dream spinner who can exchange ideas with other people through words or pretend play. To a large extent, your toddler is now freed from the tyranny of the here and now. Words enable him to muse about facts, feelings, and fantasies. He can manipulate the pictures in his mind and share a few ideas with you without having to lift a finger. His delight in expressing his opinions and coming up with new plot angles as you play together lets you know that he enjoys this new part of his personality.

Some of the images in your toddler's mind are based on real-world events. When he reaches the top of the hill before you do, and you breathlessly call out to him, "You must have flown up there, Superman!" you'll probably see a wide grin on his face. His view of himself as a fleet, assertive fellow will be supported by his recollection of the speed and power he saw Superman display during a television show. At other times, however, your toddler may use his ability to daydream and form mental pictures to prop up a strong image of himself when he's in fact feeling especially weak or vulnerable. Your three-year-old may boldly nod his head and claim, "Not 'fraid!" when you know he's terrified of witches. He's learned to summon a mental picture of himself as a brave little guy to help him cope when life gets difficult.

Such images can be based on your toddler's wishes and needs, rather than on the reality that he sees in front of him. These mental coping tools, or defenses, will grow increasingly complex as he matures, and will become part of his personality. Another kind of mental picture that will provide ballast when his sense of self is rocked is the symbolic image he is now able to form of you. He doesn't always have to be in your lap or within earshot anymore to keep an image of you fresh in his mind. Your toddler can actually recall the look on your face when you're feeling tender, or the strength of your arms as you sweep him up at the end of a long workday. His mental pictures of you are composites from all the interactions he's shared with you in various settings and at different times in the past. He can call upon those multisensory images to nurture him during lonely or sad times in his daily life.

In a very real sense, your toddler is no longer as dependent on you. Though he still needs you, he is beginning to retrieve symbols and images and use them to comfort himself. He'll soon be able to tap into the broader world of human culture, too, and draw pleasure and nurturance from the stories and rituals of the generations that preceded him. Before long his sense of self will be affected by the cultural values that you consciously and unconsciously transmit to him as the two of you talk, play, and go about your daily routine together.

For instance, if your cultural background celebrates rugged individualism and a can-do kind of spirit, you might be likely to use enthusiastic facial expressions and vocal tones when you read your child a story about Johnny Appleseed and his solo effort to plant trees, or when your child behaves assertively. On the other hand, if you come from a background that treasures consensus building and group action, you might light up when he is sharing a toy with another child. Your interactions convey your culture, and thus have an impact on the mental images your child stores and on how he views himself.