Building Your Toddler's Problem Solving Ability

Toddlers learn through play

Now that your child uses telling gestures and evocative vocalizations, and can deliberately position herself in space, she is becoming more adept at translating her wishes into action plans. As she uses her senses of touch, sight, and sound to communicate with you, and relies on your feedback and her own muscles to help her reach her heart's desire, she'll be inadvertently supporting brain growth and complexity at the same time.

As the two of you engage in gestural dialogues, you will be promoting this process and helping your child to integrate her emotional-social, sensory-motor, sequencing, spatial, auditory, vocal, and cognitive capacities. It's the process of interaction that's important. Your carefree and even silly negotiations with your child teach her how to recognize patterns and solve problems far more effectively than trying to teach her set pieces of behavior. Besides, playing together and problem-solving is a lot more fun than solemnly trying to impart information. As we mentioned earlier, you'll teach your child how to think by playing with her, not by offering her perceptual drills or flash cards. Playing is where the action is during the toddler years. There will be plenty of time in the future to focus on the acquisition of concrete facts; interestingly, facts that are learned as part of problem-solving interactions are usually better understood and retained than those learned by rote.

Another way you can help your child strengthen all the parts of her nervous system is to elaborate each of your interactions and games. When your child lets you know that she's ready for some fun, join right in by following up on whatever sense or physical activity she appears to be favoring. Nothing is quite as motivating to her as her own desires, so follow her visual, auditory, or postural lead during your playtimes together. Copycat games will usually delight her. If your child enjoys raising her arms, for example, try copying her behavior. You could then let your arms relax and rest on your belly, and see if your toddler tries to follow suit. Later on, she may be ready for a more complex gesture, and try to copy you as you touch your nose and ears. By starting with a behavior that comes easy for her, like raising both hands in the air, your toddler is able to feel the pleasure and excitement of being a copycat before being faced with the challenge of having to move her muscles in more complex ways.

If your child likes the sound of her own voice and delights in mimicking animal roars and barks, first see if you can get a dialogue going that's based on these sounds. As she leads you in a game of back-and-forth animal noises, slowly introduce some visual, tactile, and motor activities into your play together. You might try to have a variety of textured play materials-such as Play-Doh, or nappy fabrics, or even a sandbox-near at hand as you play your noisy animal game. Perhaps the barking dogs or mooing cows in your drama could scamper up a sandhill, or wrap themselves in a soft piece of velvet. This is one way to involve your child's sense of touch in your gestural interaction. Maybe you both could also get on all fours and mimic animal-like postures. The important thing is to gently steer your child into using as many of her senses and motor skills as possible as you are interacting and problem-solving, keeping in mind that she always gets first dibs at directing most of your floor-time fun.

Now is the time to ask yourself, What are the most complicated social, emotional, and language-related behaviors your child demonstrates? If she is still playing simple peekaboo games at 18 months, it's time to inject a little more social and emotional complexity into your games together. Try to expand peekaboo, a simple visual game, into a more complex visual interaction by using some props. Hide the toy she has been holding under a small rug and challenge her to look for the toy. You can help your child find the toy by throwing your voice and having the toy chirp, "I'm here, I'm here ... Come and find me!" By appealing to your child's visual interest first, and then adding some sounds that spur her to sequence her movements in a way that brings her closer to the toy, you are helping her to integrate her senses and to plan actions.

Similarly, if your toddler takes special delight in demonstrating her new walking and running skills, gradually make your chase games more and more elaborate. If you notice that your child coyly nabs your purse and makes a quick getaway to another room, join in the chase. Whoop and holler as you follow in hot pursuit, and see if your child will spice up her game with some yelps of her own. Disappear suddenly behind the sofa and let her find you. As you help your toddler incorporate more of her senses and muscles in games and dialogues that are becoming increasingly complex, she will be getting ready to climb up the next rung of the developmental ladder.

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