Processing the Past, Toddler Style

Driving home from daycare the other day, Hunter randomly said: "I saw grandma and grandpa. They say hot diggity!" The funny thing about this is that G&G had visited Hunter over a month ago, trying to get him to say Mike's favorite saying, and even though he hadn't seen them since then, Hunter had been spending that time learning what G&G were saying.

Learning how Hunter processes his information has been one of the biggest lessons Kelly and I have learned with Hunter. He's always talking about random stuff that happened in the past, and we coldn't figure out why until K. found this article about why toddlers don't do what they're told.

Essentially, toddlers are constantly thinking about the past and not necessairly what's going on right now (and definately not about the future). This means that when H. doesn't want to put on pants - which is every single day now - we just tell him that "okay, but when you're cold, your pants are in your bedroom." Sure enough, 10 minutes later when he's cold he comes running in to say "i'm cold. I'm getting my pants in my bedroom!"

This is all a function of the amount of information that they have churning thorugh their heads every day. All we know as parents is that we're finally able to let go and accept that he won't always do what he's told when he does it... but he probably will do so in the near future, and that's what you need to concentrate on.