Parenting Toddlers and Young Children
There is a scene every parent of a toddler knows.
You need to leave the park. Your two-year-old does not want to leave the park. And somewhere nearby, another parent is crouched at eye level, negotiating. Explaining. Offering choices. Bargaining with a person who still eats crayons.
Most of us have felt the pressure to parent that way — to explain everything, justify every boundary, make sure our child understands before we expect obedience. That’s backwards, especially during the early years.
Look at what Psalm 103 tells us about how God parents:
“As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”
Psalm 103:13–14 (NIV)
He knows what we can receive at each stage of our development. He doesn’t treat a new believer like a mature theologian. And He doesn’t treat a toddler like a teenager.
In the earliest years, the most important thing we can build isn’t understanding. It’s trust.
A young child doesn’t first need to understand why they can’t run into the street. They need to know that our voice means something — that when we say stop, love is behind it. That we are safe. That the world we’re shepherding them through makes sense, even when they can’t see the whole picture yet.
This is how God parents us in seasons when we can’t handle the full explanation. He doesn’t abandon us to confusion. He holds us. His arms are all the explanation we need.
For mixed-needs families, this is a truth we especially need to grasp. Some of our children will stay in this stage longer than others — not because something is wrong with them, but because of how God formed them. A child with significant cognitive delays may need the safety of consistent, loving presence long past the toddler years. A child with sensory processing challenges may need the predictability of firm boundaries before they can begin to understand the reasoning behind them.
Working within the boundaries of our children’s needs and seeing them as individuals with specific needs is the wisdom we need from God and that he so lovingly uses on each of us. Just as he meets us where we are, we meet our children where they are.
Consistency Warmth Presence
Trust-building in the early years looks like consistency — the same response to the same behavior, so your child learns that your word means what it says. It looks like warmth inside firmness — holding the boundary without coldness, so your child learns that love and limits are not opposites. And it looks like presence — showing up in the ordinary moments, not just the corrective ones.
We are not just managing behavior. We are building the foundation for future conversations to rest on.
“He knows how we are formed.” We can trust that he knows how our children are formed too, and he’ll meet them where they are too and help us to do the same.
Next week: what it looks like when our children are ready to start asking why — and how we begin to bring them into the reasoning behind our boundaries.
Ready to dig deeper? Want to start building a family culture that is healthy, life-giving, and peaceful more than chaotic? Check out the Family PEACE Plan that begins with a 7-Day Challenge to Fewer Blowups in Your Home – 7 days, 7 minutes each day. Learn more here.