How to teach toddlers nuance?

[redroseroo]

I practice attachment parenting, so I aim to teach DD correct behaviour without scolding her for doing what, initially, comes naturally. She's 16 months. However, I'm wondering how to demonstrate the difference between when the same thing is okay and when it's not, and at what point it's developmentally appropriate for them to comprehend?

For example, I've encouraged DD to knock down stacking cups when she was a baby, and now she seeks out knocking them down as soon as I start building them. That's fine if it's with me, but if that was another child's tower then my DD would seem like a little terror.

I mean, you can’t really. You just have to watch them alllllll the time at this age and intervene/distract if she’s doing something she shouldn’t be.

As she gets older (2.5-3 onwards) she’ll have more understanding. Some events warrant a telling off though, so don’t think your attachment will suffer because of it. Biting etc needs a firm dealing with or she’ll be a tiny terror!

does she go to nursery?

Toddlers don't do nuance.

The example you gave there isn't much you rally can do. Some things that might work are age specific so saying the number with her as your doing it. But she is mabey even a bit young for that.

As the pp said biting / hitting hair pulling ect needs be reprimanded. It doesn't need to be traumatic just a firm kind hands, gentle hands, teeth are for eating ect.

There's a great quote from Terry Pratchett:

“As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves. Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.' Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.”

We tell children age-appropriate things at he time. "We don't knock over cups" i fine. Even though you did encourage it. Toddlers adapt. And yes, quickly swooping in to prevent. Nuance is not what we're teaching. Age-appropriate behaviour is. Nuance is for tweens and teens.

The premises of your question are flawed, IMHO. You're making it sound like you have way more control of what your DC learns than you do, in reality - your child learns from the wider world and from observation much more than from the few concrete actions you take deliberately with them.

While you're home together, let her knock down the tower. Go to a play group and she knocks down someone else's tower - they'll bawl at her and you explain that was someone else's tower so they're sad it was knocked down. This will not hurt either of them one little bit.

You don't need to be consciously engaged with every thing you do with DC, just be a generally decent person and your child will learn to do the same. If by not scolding you mean you never say no or never say anything forcefully or firmly - there are ways of saying no and correcting a child without raising your voice etc. Over time your child will start to test the limits and you will have to scold or you will be raising a brat.

You're overthinking it, basically. Do what comes naturally, be kind and don't imagine you're raising your daughter in a lab where you can control what she encounters.

Just tell them to ask if it's ok before they trash stuff.

You change the behaviours you encourage.