Class

I'm back in school.

Well, sort of. I'm taking a class to become certified as a CNA. I love school.

We have had three days of class so far, and for tonight's class each student (there are six in the class) was assigned a topic to teach the class about childhood development. My topic is toddlerhood. I'm going to use my blog as a means of visual presentation.

Toddlers:

Toddlerhood, defined as ages 1-3, finds children growing and developing in a lot of ways, but not so much as during the first year.

For example, when a baby is born there is a huge difference between the newborn and, say, a child two years old.

See
But once children enter toddlerhood, there's not so much difference anymore.

See, the same two children as in the above picture, but now the younger one is two and the older is four.Toddlers begin to develop lots of different skills and abilities. Their vocabularies increase significantly during toddlerhood, and many toddlers really love to talk.



Toddlers also learn to be more independent. They learn to get along without their primary care giver around, to interact with other people, and to feed themselves, even using utensils to eat.

This learning to be independent thing has its challenges. For example, learning to share with others can be really difficult. Expressing emotion poses a particular challenge for the toddler, so often times they will scream, kick their feet, and cry when they don't get their way.

Oh yeah, there's also that learning to control the bladder and bowels thing. Toddlers do that too, first learning to control those functions during waking hours and afterwards during the nighttime.