Ways We Encourage Our Toddler to Try New Behaviors

My daughter is seventeen months old. She loves to imitate everyone around her. Sometimes she pretends to be a mommy and feeds her baby doll. She often acts like her dad and takes his keys to pretend to drive. When we need our daughter to try a new food or new activity, we imitate the behavior for her. We have seen great results with this method and it eliminates temper tantrums and thrown food from the highchair.

One day we wanted to get our daughter to eat oatmeal. We made a bowl for her and one for Daddy. Daddy showed her how yummy it is and next thing we knew, she was a fan. She was laughing as her and her Daddy did the same thing.

Another day she fell and got her first cut. We put the band aid on her, but she didn't like it and kept ripping it off. We really wanted to keep the wound protected, so we modeled the behavior for her. Her daddy and I donned Hello Kitty pink band aid on our fingers and after seeing that, she was happy to wear hers. Daddy felt pretty silly wearing a pink band aid, but he obliged seeing that it made our daughter wear hers.

We find that in this toddler stage we can model behaviors and actions when we need to get our daughter to do new things, explore new foods and or act a certain way. She loves to imitate everyone, even down to the family pet. We find that modeling behaviors is a gentle way to encourage good behavior and is fun for her.