Toddlers | Grammy's Corner

Kid’s Rooms: Shabby Chic Bedroom Theme

Shabby Chic Girl's Room

Around 2 years of age we see many changes in our children. They begin to demand more independence with the words ‘I do it’ when it comes to dressing themselves or feeding themselves. They, also, decide to climb out of the crib during this time period; which means it is time to remove the crib and transfer the child into atoddler bed.Their crib mattress fits into the toddler bed; therefore, their bedding will still fit the new bed. But after two years, do you find yourself tired of the theme pattern that you had initially picked out and ready for a new theme for your daughter’s room.

The Tiffany Rose Collection

Shabby Chic may not be the first idea that comes to mind for a preschooler’s bedroom theme, but bright white furniture will make her feel like a princess, and decorating with pastels comes naturally in a girl’s bedroom. The shabby chic home look is charmingly vintage inspired by British homes decorated from the early 1900’s to the 1950’s. The main colors in shabby chic décor are pure white, cream, and soft pastels in yellows, pinks, and greens. (Furniture and Design Ideas, July 2009) Faded floral prints and lace trim is a beautiful backdrop for any little girl’s bedroom. The Tiffany Rose Collection, a toddler bed and accessories, has a vintage design of this period with a raised Tiffany Bow on the head board and foot board hand painted in soft green with pastel pink roses flowing around it. The quilt, part of the Tiffany Rose Collection, is hand crafted from floral prints with chenille backing and includes rose bud sheets to match. For sheets, look for floral prints from the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s. You can find popular rose prints in a variety of shades of pink and green. Look for old quilts, chenille spreads or printed coverlets to act as bedspreads in shades of muted green, sky blue, soft pink and butter yellow. Add throw pillows, chair covers, rugs, and curtains that are all faded for a vintage style where all the colors work together. To keep the room in harmony you might want to paint the walls a soft pastel pulled from the colors out of a floral fabric. Instead of the obvious choice of pink or red, pull out taupe and green so that the roses will be the focal point of your room. The use of neutrals will keep your space from becoming too busy and will stay true to the light and airy feeling that is so innvocative of the shabby chic style.

The bed should be the focal point of a shabby chic room. This means going with a four-poster bed, sleigh bed, or just using a headboard and a foot board. If you don’t have a foot board then just add a bench or hope chest to the end of the bed to give it more presence. Emma’s Treasure Collection from Lea Furniture, with it’s Shabby-Chic design, is made from select hardwoods with a distressed Vintage white finish with antiqued pewter hardware. The traditional styling and cozy time worn look of Emma’s Treasures, creates a collection sure to please any young girl.

Shabby Chic Bedroom for a Young Girl

Since this style focuses on collections and antiques you can use the items you have or slowly build your room over time. This allows you to save money and revive pieces of furniture that may have sentimental meaning as your daughter grows. Not every piece in a shabby chic room has to match but they should all relate to each other.

Look for unconventional storage for your preschooler’s toys and games, such as wicker baskets, old wire bins, or old wooden packing boxes. The Tiffany Rose Storage Bench with roses painted on it makes a perfect place to begin to teach your daughter to organize and sort her toys. She’s never too young to begin learning organization skills. Remember that quality is better than quantity for displaying a toddler’s toys for easy access.

It’s not always easy to know what room personality best suits your daughter’s personality. If she likes things fancy, fluffy, bright and beautiful, chances are you’ll probably end up filling her room with all things chic and stylish! Chic and stylish girls decor is generally pink, white, and lavender. These soft colors are often pastel and whites tend toward antique or off-whites as well. Anything stylish is usually very ornately detailed. Curving lines and intricate carvings make great chic room decor, as does anything with crystal accents, crosshatch or harlequin patterns, polka dots, and flowers. Think soft, think feathery…. think stripes and dots contrasted against solid colors, but also think delicate. Whether you choose a Victorian shabby chic or a stylish shabby chic, little girl’s love shopping almost as much as mom does; and there’s an.. abundance of boutique decorating ideas.

Stylish Shabby Chic

Kid’s Safety: Car Safety Seats

Study shows Colo. car seat use declines in 2010

Safety officials say the drop in car seat use and the low overall seat belt use among children highlights the need for continued education to parents and caregivers about the best ways to keep children safe while traveling in a motor vehicle. Several times a week I pick up a newspaper or hear on the news about a toddler dying from adult abuse of some type. These adults range in age from mothers to boyfriends to fathers to babysitters to playmates. And the abuse ranges over a wide spectrum from drunk driver, to a 16 year old baby sitter talking on the phone while the three year wanders into the backyard and drowns in the swimming pool, to a stressed out parent being late for work, forgetting to drop the infant off at the sitter’s home, but leaves her in the smeltering heat of the car all day. Children are our precious gifts, given into our care for a short time, to guide as they develop into adults. This includes keeping them safe and secure in their environment; after all, we are the adult.

Child Passenger Safety Week was September 19-25. Car crashes are the leading cause of death of children 3 to 14 years old. Adults are responsible for driving the cars. Adults are responsible for placing children in car safety seats. What I don’t understand is the WHY parents don’t take the time to correctly place their child in car seats, after all it is the law in all fifty states. Overall, an average of four children under the age of four are killed in motor vehicle crashes every day in the U.S., but many injuries and fatalities are easily preventable. We, as adults, need to see that our precious cargo is safe when making trips in the automobile.

We can begin by teaching them safety in and around cars. Remind your child that they should not play in and around park cars. The number of heat related deaths in automobiles in 2010 in children is rising. We need to teach them not to play with the windows or door locks, or climb in a parked car to play. When someone starts an engine, they should move away from the car immediately. Rollover deaths are a tragic way to die. Another way to keep your child safe is to provide the proper car seats and use them correctly. Safety seats can reduce vehicle-related injuries by 71% for infants and 54% for toddlers. Because of new research, AAA now urges parents to keep children in rear-facing child safety seats until they exceed the weight or height limits of the car seat. Toddlers who ride in a rear-facing car seat up to their second birthday are 75 percent less likely to die or be seriously injured in a crash. In countries where children ride in rear-facing seats until ages 3 or 4, crash data show a further reduction in injuries and death. Parents are also encouraged to talk to their kids as they get older about safety in the car. So kids don’t try to get out of their cars seats or unbuckle their seat belts.

Infants should be placed in a car seat in the back of the car and have the car seat facing the rear. Current standards require children to ride in rear-facing seats until they are at least 1 year old or 20 pounds. Within the next six months, the American Academy of Pediatrics is expected to adopt a policy to keep children in rear-facing child safety seats longer. Car seat manufacturers have begun developing safety seats that will enable children up to 40 pounds to ride in rear-facing seats. As kids grow, the child seat will be replaced will a forward-facing booster seat until the child is 4’9″. AAA says most manufacturing companies include information on the required measurements and weight limits for parents. You need to take the time to read this information for the correct installation and length of time the child should use the safety seat.

Don’t forget your unborn child. During pregnancy, wearing a seat belt low across the abdomen protects you and your unborn child. It is better to be safe, than to die.

Child Passenger Safety Week should continue all year long for the safety of our children. For those parents that always check to see that the children are safely secured in the car, I give a high five!

Kid’s Development: Life Skills for Toddlers

Learning by Playing

Toddlers learn some of the most important life’s lessons through play during the early years. Children learn best when they engage in activities that they really like. Play allows them the chance to explore, imagine, and wonder at the world around them. Their observation skills stay alert to everyone and the activities within their surroundings. As toddlers grow, play is important to the development of(Gabby Bugwadia)

intelligence
imagination
motor skills
social interaction
emotional development

Intelligence

Toddlers look, listen, and learn as an adult reads to them.

Look, Listen, Learn

New research shows that toddlers can re-enact what they see, hear, and learn from picture books. Researchers know that picture books can help four to five year old preschoolers with a range of literary and life skills. The finding suggests that picture books may play a much greater role than simply entertaining toddlers and may help them understand the world and develop life skills.(ABC Science Online) Reading, storytelling, singing, finger plays provide the opportunity for language development. Toddlers begin to learn basic math skills through play while manipulating and observing items in their immediate environment. Toddlers need opportunities to participate in child-driven play where they can learn decision-making skills and their own areas of interest. Their observations stimulate their higher level thinking as they begin to concentrate and seek out bits and pieces of information while exploring the environment to promote intellectual growth.

Parenting Tips:
Why Baby Needs A Book

Imagination

If you have ever observed a toddler, you will notice they copy everything they see you doing. When toddlers play they are opening up their imagination and creativity to a whole new world. Some toddlers create an imaginary friend or pretend to care for the baby just like Mommy by placing the baby in a doll cradle. They might wash the dishes,try to put on clothes by themselves, play dress-up, or pretend to go to the store, imitating all the life skills they have observed family members performing. Sometimes, we will even see a child copy something that we don’t want repeated! They don’t know the difference from right or wrong, imitating only what they see. It is up to you, as the parent, to teach the child right or wrong through your own actions on a day to day basis. Through play toddlers develop their independence and master everyday life skills of imagination and creativity.

Motor Skills

Toddler Playing with Building Blocks

Toddlers develop gross and fine motor skills through play activities. The first muscles to develop are the large muscle group as the child begins to crawl, walk, run, jump, climb, throw and catch a ball. Their fine motor skills begin to develop as they learn to use a fork and spoon, pick up cereal with two fingers, stack blocks, play with construction sets, and color with crayons. During playtime the gross and fine motor skills are continually being used in one way or another. These need to be developed before the child can begin handwriting in school. Have you ever noticed someone with very poor handwriting? That’s because their fine motor skills were never developed well as a toddler.

Social Interaction

As kids get together for a play date, they learn how to behave, interact, get along and negotiate for toys or other play things. While playing in a group setting, the toddler will learn how to accept disappointment at not always getting his way or what they want, how to settle disputes, and not to insist on always having their way. Toddlers need to feel secure in their ownership before they can share. Forcing them to share can actually delay the development of sharing skills. Instead, introduce the concept of taking turns. Around this age, toddlers begin to seek companionship with kids their age. Initially they play side by side, but gradually begin to interact with each other. It’s never too early to give children language for their interactions with each other. Play teaches toddlers ways of how to socialize and get along with other kids.

Toddlers Playing Side by Side

Emotional Development

One of the most important tasks in parenting toddlers is helping them learn to manage their emotions. This life skill will be a crucial factor throughout their lives in not only relationships but academic and career success. Play helps toddlers to develop and better handle their emotions. It offers opportunities for toddlers to work out their fears while gaining emotional control and getting rid of anxieties. They are entitled to their feelings, which have a way of just showing up in human beings, like our arms and legs. But all humans, even little ones, should be held responsible for what they do with their arms and legs and feelings. Your job is teach them self management techniques while they are playing. Kids who receive a lot of empathy for their own feelings from the adults in their lives are the earliest to develop empathy for others, and research has shown that empathy for others is the cornerstone of successful interpersonal relationships.(Dr. Laura Markham)

Young children have a tremendous capacity to learn from the moment they are born, but optimal development hinges on the experiences provided for them by the adults who take care of them. In homes where play is encouraged, the minds and personalities of children develop effectively to its fullest potential. Each opportunity of play teaches toddlers many skills that will be advantageous later on in life. It is our job as parents to provide optimal play experiences to help toddlers master the steps that they take in life.

Parenting Tips:
Why Baby Needs A Book