2 Year Check In, Looking Forward

I have (in books and online) tons of lists of milestones that my toddler probably-might-should meet by her second birthday. Or some of them are considered ones she'll meet during this, her third year. I'm really reluctant to get too caught up in them, but they are good to review now and then. So here goes.

Here's a list of life skills from the blog Busy Kids = Happy Mom. The first item, "undress self," makes me laugh right out loud. Ladybug is so good at undressing herself that for a while we found her naked after every naptime. But do we let her use this skill practically? So I just suggested to my husband that during the bedtime routine, Ladybug should be encouraged to take of her own outfit before diaper change and PJs. Moving toward independence once skill at a time. Cool!

The rest of the items on that list are similar. Things she can do that we would like to start encouraging as part of the routines. We're doing well with teeth brushing. A lot of the cleaning up items would be nice to do more regularly, especially clearing her space at the table. I hadn't thought of that! She does play independently for a good long stretch during afternoon quiet time. She doesn't comb her own hair, but I'm going out on a limb and assuming this list wasn't made with mixed girls' tight curls in mind.

Slow and Steady: Get Me Ready has lists for each year entitled "Measurable Parameters to Profile Child Development." According to the book, your child needs to attain 16 out of 20 parameters to consider development satisfactory. Okay. Let's look at 2 to 3 years:

To keep it brief, let me just say checkity check check. Jumping, climbing, running. Crayon scribbles, stringing words together, listening to stories, imitation, understanding of simple concepts, quiet play. The only things she isn't really doing are skills I would expect a little later into her third year. These are: knowing her full name, knowing her sex, and knowing her age. I bet she understands her gender, but she hasn't started talking about it. Although the other day she pointed at my husband and me, dubbing us first "the dad and the mom," and then "the brother and the sister." I think that is gender identification. She didn't make it personal to herself though.

The other day I had the markers out and Bug made a game out of matching the caps to the right marker. She was pretty insistent on doing this, so I watched her carefully. With no input from me, she was able to match them all up, correcting her own mismatches once or twice. I enjoyed this and decided to mention it in my "assessment" post, because it seems like exactly the kind of exercise that I could have nervously administered as a test. Instead it happened naturally in the course of play, which is the way most of these mini-milestones took place.