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TODDLERS

Activities to Build Your Toddler’s Skills
You might be surprised by how many tasks your child can handle if you give him/her the chance. "Toddlers have real capabilities," says Tovah Klein, PhD, director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, in New York. "By encouraging them to use their skills, you can help nurture their development."
Read more at Parents.com

Play: Children’s Context for Development
Through play, children learn about cultural norms and expectations, discover the workings of the world, and negotiate their way through their surroundings. Play teaches children about themselves, others, rules, consequences, and how things go together or come apart.
Read more at Communityplaythings.com

Play-Date Protocol
Play dates are a great way for kids to work on building their relationships, but it's important to keep a few things in mind when planning one, according to Tovah Klein, PhD.
Read more at Parents.com

How to Be A Great Mom to a Toddler
“They have no sense of what time or day it is, so a routine is the only way they know what's going on," says Tovah Klein, director of the Barnard College Toddler Center in New York City. "It helps them feel safe and secure when they're going through such huge developmental changes."
Read more at Parenting.com

How Toddlers Really Think: Understanding and Reasoning 101
When an infant plays with her toes or studies her wiggling fingers, she has no idea that these body parts belong to her, notes Tovah Klein, PhD, psychology professor and director of the Toddler Development Center at Barnard College in New York.
Read more at Parents.com

When Only One Parent Will Do: Why Babies Can Show a Preference for One Parent
"It's heartbreaking." It's also very common, says Tovah Klein, Ph.D., director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, in New York.
Read more at Parenting.com

Why Kids Love Opening (and Closing) Doors
While it may seem like they're just making noise by opening and closing a door, drawer, or container, they're learning more than you think: how objects work, the sounds they make, and the basic concepts of "open" and "closed," says Tovah Klein, Ph.D., director of Barnard College's Center for Toddler Development in New York.
Read more at Parenting.com

How to Tell if Your Child is Ready for Preschool
by Patricia Shimm with additional reporting by Sarah Henry
Most preschools will start accepting children at around age 2 1/2, but that doesn't mean your child is magically ready for preschool when he reaches that age.
Read more at Parentcenter.babycenter.com

Running Away
"Toddlers love the feeling of being free and running around," says Patricia Shimm, director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development in New York and co-author of Parenting Your Toddler.
Read more at Babycenter.com

Good Buddy, Bad Mom
"Let your friend know how much you care about her and how important it is to you that the children get along," says Patricia Henderson Shimm, associate director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and author of Parenting Your Toddler: The Expert's Guide to the Tough and Tender Years (Perseus Publishing).
Read more at Time.com

Vacations with Children
Young children, and toddlers in particular, have no sense of time passing so they need certain markers to understand that the day is moving forward, says Tovah Klein, Ph.D., Director of Barnard College Center for Toddler Development. There are some routines that need to be kept, no matter where you are: grandma’s house, the beach, Disney.
Read more at Travelmuse

Bright Side of Your Child's Bad Behavior
Even though this kind of behavior needs to be defused and discouraged, those first tries at rough play are not signs of a bully in the making, says Tovah Klein, Ph.D., the director of the Center for Toddler Development at Barnard College in New York City.
Read more at CNN

Mealtime Battles: Behind Your Toddler's Misbehavior
"Toddlers now have this sense of self. They're realizing, 'I have choices. I don't have to just eat what you put in front of me,'" explains Tovah P. Klein, PhD.
Read more at Babyzone.com

Kids, Boxes, Joy
So why do kids love boxes? "Because a box is so open-ended, it can be anything your child wants it to be," says Tovah Klein, Ph.D.
Read more at Parenting.com

BEYOND THE TODDLER YEARS

Standardized Tests for Kindergarten?
See Toddler Center Director Tovah Klein’s comments on WABC at ABC Local

A Plan to Test the City’s Youngest Pupils
Tovah P. Klein, director of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development, said that even if the tests were not intended to have real consequences, they would.
Read more at the New York Times

The System Flunked, We Didn’t
Tovah Klein and other Central Park East I parents take on Mayor Bloomberg’s grading system for public schools in a New York Times Op-Ed piece.
Read more at the New York Times  

Child Pageants Get Renewed Attention
Tovah Klein, a psychology professor and director of Barnard College's Center for Toddler Development, called the self-centered nature of child pageants "worrisome" and "potentially harmful."
Read more at Daily Camera