As the parent of a toddler, you can easily feel like you’re spending your entire day saying no and redirecting behavior. It’s a key age for developing life long behavioral traits in your child and they need someone to guide them into discovering right from wrong.

The point of teaching your child isn’t so they learn to do things the way you like, but to develop in them character that is reputable. You want their choices and actions to reflect good character, and good character doesn’t come by chance, it has to be developed.

Focusing on how much I was saying no, don’t touch that, or don’t do that in my parenting journey was beginning to get exhausted. After reading and listening to a few things, something clicked (a blog post to come on that soon!). I realized that I needed to focus on the bigger picture. It wasn’t about getting my toddler to stop doing what he shouldn’t be doing right then, but to develop character within him by doing so.

I remembered a family my husband and I use to watch their kids for long periods of time and the neat little sayings they would come up when guiding their children. All their discipline stemmed from things that they wanted to be instilled in their children’s character, and they made sure that was evident in their communication. So I thought it would be a good change to try and come up with some for our family.

Three things to teach your toddler:

Love God First and Most. If you’ve been around here for some time, you know that faith is a big part of my life. So the number one thing that we want to be teaching our children is to love God first and most. If I can teach my children from day one to love God first and most, their decisions will begin to reflect that love for Christ. Having a toddler this is done more by showing him how to love God first through my actions, my husband’s actions, and the decisions we make for our family. We focus on incorporating God in all that we do so that our children can see the importance of Him in our life. We use this as the foundation for everything else.

We have just recently started this one and the effects have been tremendous! Jase is even saying it with me now! The heart behind this is that He would learn to obey right away. Listening is a really important character trait, and so is following directions. Instead of arguing or throwing a fit, we want him to obey without delay. It takes a lot of reminding at this age, but it’s better than yelling or saying no until you lose your patience. If Jase does something he isn’t supposed to, I ask him to stop. If he doesn’t listen right away, I get down on his level and remind him, “Jase, obey right away, remember?” This is reminding an encouraging him that first time obedience is important.

Love Others. This one is obvious, it’s the golden rule! This includes his sister, his friends, the neighbors, and strangers! We want to treat other people just like we would want to be treated. So what does that mean at this age? Would you want someone to take your toy, or would you want them to wait until you’re done? Would you want someone to share with you? Would you want someone to hit you? Let’s love others just like we love ourselves!

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