Just turned 3 toddler has been saying factually untrue things and trying to get me to agree/repeat these things. They won’t let me just ignore their statements and push for an affirmation. Not affirming leads to tears and a tantrum. I’ve been just saying ‘ok’ or ‘I think you’re wrong but ok’ but mostly letting things go if they seem trivial like: ‘Ice cream is not cold!’, ‘It’s not dark yet!’, ‘Snow isn’t white’, etc… I’ve been mostly targetting statements they make about other people and their feelings or desires like ‘You’re not tired!’, ‘She doesn’t want to sing.’, ‘He’s not hungry.’, etc… and letting the meltdowns happen in those situations but my spouse is concerned that I’m making toddler believe they can have their own facts outside of reality and that I should push back every time something factually inaccurate comes up. I feel like this behavior is probably developmentally normal and like everything else, we need to target specific things to work on one at a time. Thoughts?
I work in Early Childhood Education, your kids fine. They’re just playing as they explore and learn. Your husbands approach just dismisses their voice and doesn’t achieve anything constructive.
If they’re still acting like this by 5ish I might start to be a little concerned, but honestly I’d expect they’ll get bored of it in a month or two.
The tantrums are also a pretty standard response as they’re learning emotional regulation, alongside trying to be independent while learning more things at any other stage of life. Its chaotic, all you can to is be there to role models and guide them through understanding what they’re feeling and ways they can control their state.
If you really don’t want to play along, the best method is re-direction. I like to ask confusing questions, e.g. “the snow isn’t white” “Oh what colour is the snow? Is it red, I like red because I like red apples. What’s your favourite fruit?” Or you could just point to say a dog walking outside the window etc. just something to get them thinking about a different topic.
Great answer! And from someone who’s in the relevant field. Hopefully Lemmy keeps getting more varieties of people from different fields so we get people like you =) It’s the one thing I miss about Reddit.