Paying Attention To Adults
Probably the single most important thing you want your toddler to learn is that adults are important, rewarding, and fun to interact with. You can tell when a child feels connected to adults. He will seek them out and smiles when he sees them. He will reach for them or go to them when he is happy.
Spend as much time as possible interacting and engaging with your child to help him see that adults are fun, rewarding, and comforting.
Also, when the child is frightened, sad, hungry, or hurting, he knows that adults can make him feel better. He finds adults comforting as well as fun. He will want to be with them when he is unhappy. Watch how this little boy runs to his own mother when he’s hurt even though another adult is trying to make him feel better.
When children feel connected to adults and interested in them, they want the adults that are special to them to pay attention to them. Children enjoy showing things to adults and look forward to the adult’s reaction. In the next clip, Jack, who’s almost 2, wants to make sure his mother is watching him and says, “Look at me, Mama!”
Most of the ideas in this module are ways to teach the child a set of skills during everyday activities or routines. A really important thing about this kind of teaching is that it increases the amount of time the child spends interacting with others. Teaching the child to pay attention to the important adults in his life is a good place to start.
Paying attention means watching what the adult is doing. Notice that this little girl stays near the adults, playing and watching them.
Even very small children pay attention to adults’ feelings. Watch how the adult is pretending to be sad, and both children start to get upset.
See how this little boy is looking right at the teacher’s eyes? Here he is again, looking at a different adult.
In the next clip, the teacher is pushing the child on the swing. Notice how each time the child looks away, the teacher stops the swing and waits for eye contact before giving him another push. As soon as he is paying attention to her, she pushes the swing. In this way, she is making eye contact work as the “on and off button” for the fun!
To help your child want to interact more, spend as much time as you can doing interesting things with your child. Find ways to make him smile and laugh. And comfort him when he’s sad.