Your Clever Toddler in Week 79: The Effects of Emotional Eavesdropping

Knowing about your little one's new emotional eavesdropping skills can help you redirect your behaviors as a parent. As you read last year in weeks 27 and 31, kids are sensitive to conflict in the family at a very young age (witnessing it repeatedly can create cortisol in their brains, which destroys neurons). Also, you know that some children, because of their innate temperament, are more sensitive than others.

Therefore, it's important to monitor your own emotional responses to certain situations—calls from in-laws, consistently late carpoolers, tiffs with your partner—so that you don't overtax your child's ability to manage negative emotional reactions. (Learn more about de-stressing at home and positive parenting here.)

Coming soon, look forward to: Week 80: Applying Solutions from One Problem to Another
Review the most recent accomplishments: Week 78: Encouraging Compliance

Curious about how else your toddler might be developing right now? Learn more about her clever brain and her growing body here:

• What's happening in Month 19?
• Here's what our pediatrician says you might be worried about this month.