One of a child’s main developmental tasks in from the second year of life is to demonstrate that he/she is a separate person with a mind of his/her own. Children sometimes accomplish this task in noisy and irritating ways - at least, for us adults.

So our three year old daughter, to show us she is her own person, resorts to using the only tools she has for right now: saying no, doing the opposite of what she’s told and throwing a tantrum when her efforts fail.

I will not make this sound so bad because actually, it isn’t. My daughter is making it easy for me to slide into the world of parenting with less skills than what is actually needed. She almost always listens to what we have to say and rarely throws a tantrum unless she is really sleepy and tired. Most of our home wars originate from her head-strongness.

Our daughter is a girl in every way. From her expressions to her vanity! Whenever possible, we give her choices. For example we let her choose whether to wear the red shirt or the pink by opening the her part of the cabinet and show her her clothes. She chooses and dress herself up on her own. That saves us a lot of time for battles in the morning.

So how did we get out of the terrible two’s stage? Actually, I don’t believe there is such thing limited to the age of two as terrible. Every stage is different and with some trail of terrible in it. The toddler period is also the time for us to begin developing a very important parenting habit: catching the child being good. When Akari follows a simple direction or calmly accepts a limit we’ve set, we give her a big smile, a hug or a kiss and tell her we like what she did.

Young children want their parent’s approval; when we pay attention to their positive behavior, they are likely to repeat it again and again.