Early Learning
Between the ages of two and three, your child will start to form more abstract concepts about the objects and people she can identify. For example, she'll begin to connect the image of a horse she sees in a book with an actual horse she sees on a nearby farm. Even more, she'll begin to generalize that all horses make neighing sounds. As you might gather, a sophisticated process of conceptualization is underway in a two-year-old.
Fact
Toddlers ask questions about what they see, taste, and touch. Your answers should be brief and simple, because two-year-olds can't process complex ideas. If your child asks, for example, why cars need gas, you can say that the gas makes cars move. A one-or two-sentence answer is enough.
Toddlers come to learn and understand by means of touching, tasting, and moving. Many two-year-olds still put foreign objects in their mouths (though by the end of this year, they'll know they shouldn't) and want to touch things directly rather than just observing them from behind your legs.
One of the marvels about a young brain is that it grows dynamically. As a result, a child forms connections and comes up with ideas that someone hasn't necessarily given her. A two-year-old's brain also grows with experience, which a child gathers by taking in information through his senses (tasting, touching, seeing, hearing, and smelling). This absorption takes time; it is a process that can't be rushed.
So when your child is sitting in the grocery cart and wants to hold the red pepper you're purchasing, let him. Let him touch it, smell it, and don't worry if he hits it against the cart. He is learning; he is not being disobedient or trying to mishandle the object.
In fact, talk to him about what he's doing, without drawing conclusions for him. Ask him specific questions: “How does it taste? Do you like how red it is?” Use as many words as you can and explain what you know about peppers, even though your child is not concerned about such details. “I love peppers in salad. Do you know that you can cook peppers or eat them raw?” This level of attention takes time, of course, but your approach will be rewarded when your child goes to school exhibiting an eagerness to learn more about the world.
At the same time your two-year-old is learning more about the world, you are learning more about her. At this stage in her life she already demonstrates distinct preferences for activities and objects. She picks out favorite toys and enjoys, say, taking walks more than watching TV, or listening to music more than going swimming.
Although your child is too young for you to rule out activities she might become interested in later, you should certainly encourage her current interests as much as possible. If she likes to scribble, get her paper and crayons. See if there are art classes in your area for two-year-olds. If she likes books, take her to story time at a local bookstore or library. Such exploration of budding interests allows your child to see that learning can continue, enabling her to discover even more.
During this year you'll find your child becoming an expert in one or two subjects, such as trucks or dinosaurs. While it's often boring for a parent to hear endless recitation of the names of trucks or to have to read his child the same book over and over again, this repetitiveness is common to almost all children, so you should get used to it. It marks an early stage of learning as children begin to go into deeper study of a favorite topic.
There is another reason to encourage your child's inclinations: You are all the while validating who she is. At the age of two, your child's basic sense of self comes from the way you respond to her. So if she's enjoying an activity (kicking a ball, for example), the more positively you respond to her interest, the more likely she will stick with it. If you show no interest, her enthusiasm wanes. And if you discourage the activity, there's a good chance she will interpret this as personal criticism. In other words, she'll conclude, “Mommy thinks I'm not good at this.”
Children need you to witness them. Even more, they need you to give them feedback — preferably loving and supportive feedback — about what you are seeing. At two, they trust your eyes and responses more than they trust their own.
