Toddler Teaming

Once your child has started to grow out of babiehood, the fun really begins. There is no way around it. The child soon realises that his/her job is to gain and keep parents attention for a maximum period every day. They need to demonstrate they are more important/interesting/urgent/distressing/dangerous than any other possible activity you have planned. Whether it is preparing your tax return, reading the news, cleaning your car or answering your telephone they will interject to tell you in their own way that *they* are more important. This is only fair. They only get one childhood to learn everything from scratch.
From : How to prevent tantrums
Throwing a temper tantrum is a natural way for a young child to experiment with feelings and gain independence and control of little bodies. However, there are some things parents can do to prevent tantrums and help the young child learn to control emotions.

On top of that they need to build on what they have learnt before. Every missed moment for them pushes them behind the eightball and hinders their future. This is a really crucial point that will stay the same now and into the future. For children between one and four years of age, the problems and the delights, the tantrums and the entertainment - is about gaining attention. In fact, the quiet, well behaved and non-confrontational child faces a real danger of getting way behind, especially with parents that are either lazy or naive. As parents, especially fathers, now is the time to build on whatever relationship we had with the children, and further rationalise other activities, and only keep those that can sustain constant interruption and/or being put on hold for weeks at a time.

Back in the 1960's and 70's, the norm was to consider that it was right to make demands of the mother to do the icky baby stuff, and to keep the father's news hour, beer habits and football matches. Many a man would take a hard line, threaten to leave and in the past, the woman would generally back down. In the 1990's and 00's, any such hard line would be taken as grounds for separation and the father often leaves, and takes little interest while the children are babies. However, somewhere down the track when the child is a toddler or older, they cry foul, demand access rights, and the result is a messy, expensive, combative situation where everybody loses. Under the law, the child's rights are king - It is their right to a relationship with their father, grandparents etc. which is most important, not the parents/grandparent's rights etc. - more on that later.

The problem is that times have inextricably changed and any new father should not have the approach of their own father for best results. There is a very strong case now and into the future for keeping the family together and both parents, as a team, to train, teach, imprint and socialise with the toddler. However - even though the child's rights are king as I have said above, this creates a dillemma because the parents are the ones who have to take control! The child's best training outcomes are just one of the balls to juggle amongst all the others including finance, health, sanity and keeping up appearances. It is usually obvious to outsiders that a "ball has been dropped". What isn't obvious is how hard the tricks they are attempting, especially when they don't have professional coaches or mentors (Outsiders are usually barely better). This is why shows such as "Supernanny", "Honey, we're killing the kids" and "DIY Disaster" strike such a chord. When a ball is dropped, and the kids are running riot, or they and you have become overweight and unhealthy, or your DIY projects go belly-up, it isn't obvious how to pick up the ball and do better. Although you can't get "supernanny" to go to every house with a problem, some people have been able to self-train with the help of these shows.

The government has started to legislate more with respect to early childhood issues. Family payments can be suspended if immunisations are not up to scratch. Children get assessed if autism or ADHD is suspected from childcare & kindergarten. Child care centres have had more and more complex legislation attached to them, and they have become more and more dependent on government money both paid to parents and directly funding centres. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but this is just the tip of the iceberg for what is to come. Behavioural assessments will get more and more thorough and become like a net, catching behavioural issues when they are easiest to be adjusted. This will extend to dietary assessments, financial planning assessments, and home and car appropriateness and safety. It will stop just short of the government actually owning children, but Governments will exert a great deal of pressure in the interest of preventing parents from "dropping the ball"