Your Toddler's Development: Ideas and Imagination

Life of the Mind

By the time your toddler is 24 to 30 months old, he will be displaying a new ability that is nothing short of miraculous. He will be capable of creating richly detailed, multisensory pictures, which we commonly refer to as symbols, or ideas. No longer will he be forced to act on his environment to get his needs met; now your toddler can form a mental image of his wants and desires, and label it with specific spoken words. Instead of plucking your sleeve, dragging you over to the cupboard, pointing to a bag of cookies, and jumping up and down in anticipation, he'll shortly be able to look you in the eye and demand, "Cookie now!"

Your toddler will gradually be moving away from relying on the complex behavioral interactions that he mastered just a few months ago, and will instead be using verbal shortcuts to get his needs met. He has learned to associate a specific collection of sounds, "Cookie," with a mental picture that captures the inviting look, sweet taste, chewy texture, and satisfying smell of a particularly yummy foodstuff known as a cookie. Now he can connect the physical sensation of his hunger pangs with a desire to quell that yearning, aching feeling. He can tap in to happy memories of his previous encounters with cookies and act to recapture those experiences by turning to you and uttering a word or two.

Your toddler's transition toward a "life of the mind," and not just a "life of action," is an exhilarating but exhausting development for both you and him. As he makes enormous strides in understanding the world around him, he'll also be frightened from time to time by the barrage of ideas that assault his brain. His imagination will be working overtime, and he may suddenly seem more dependent or clingy, or be beset by nightmares. He'll rely on your soothing embraces more than ever to calm himself as he slowly learns which of his ideas are real and which ones are make-believe.

He'll be busy churning out ideas each time the two of you sit side by side and play "Let's pretend" games together. You'll watch with delight as he tenderly puts his teddy bear to bed inside an empty shoe box, and recognize that your child is starting to grasp that one thing can stand for, or symbolize, another. Because he can picture what a bed looks and feels like in his mind, he is able to pretend that a hollow, rectangular box is a ready symbol for a bed. When you comment that his teddy bear "is sleeping in his bed," he will eventually comprehend that the word "sleeping" stands for the bear's activity in the bed. As soon as he can articulate the sounds, your toddler will himself use the word/symbol "sleeping" to describe an elaborate pattern of behaviors that he has observed.

All of your child's idea-laden play, and his use of words-as-symbols, permit him mentally to manipulate the objects and feelings that surround him. Now he can call out, "Thirsty!" in the middle of the night when he wants a sip of water, without having to cry or stumble to your bed. He can expend less energy to get what he wants than he would have just a few short months ago.

Another way your toddler will show you that he takes pleasure in using ideas is his increased skill at organizing blocks and other objects into meaningful patterns. He'll move way beyond stacking three or four blocks on top of each other and is likely to improvise towers and corrals that become creative settings for the imaginary dramas he creates. In the coming months you may see him building block castles that are toppled by pretend giants or pushing a racing car along a "road" made of rectangular blocks placed end to end. His block play will follow a story line that emerges out of his own fertile imagination.

Your toddler will share his ideas with you in still another way that is more subtle than verbal demands, pretend play, or building designs in space. During countless interactions with you, he has developed a sense that the two of you are collaborators in the world of emotions. Hopefully, you've encouraged him to talk about his feelings and to feel comfortable displaying all of his emotions and intentions during your playtimes together.

For instance, with your input he'll come to recognize that the flip-flops he feels in his tummy are signs that he's a little scared, or that when he's really angry he starts to shake his fists or flail his arms. In this way, you help your toddler to read his own emotional mood and eventually to label the physical feelings and behaviors that are associated with joy, curiosity, sadness, anger, and humiliation. Because he feels safe and secure as he interacts with you concerning desires and frustrations, he becomes better able to tolerate a wide range of feelings. He can pause and acknowledge to himself that he's feeling mad, hungry, or scared, without immediately feeling compelled to act. He may become increasingly able to withstand the urge to hit, bite, or scream because he can derive an alternate kind of satisfaction by using words or pretend play-symbols. He'll come to know that communicating both his good and bad feelings with you is inherently pleasurable. These "reflective pauses" are another sign that he can play out behavior in his mind, or symbolize it, before he feels impelled to carry it out. He's motivated to do this because it keeps him involved in a warm, close relationship with you.

Your toddler may be intoxicated with his ability to share ideas with you. When his forehead furrows as he silently pits good-guy and bad-guy action figures against each other, or he turns to you with an impassioned plea "Go, Daddy!" it is clear that your child has actually been thinking, and contemplating a future course of action.

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