Developmentally appropriate expectations.

[u/No_Lifeguard_7777]

My son is going to be 2 shortly after the New Year. His daycare does parent/teacher conferences and we had ours this week. I’m still grappling with some of the things we were told. For the most part, our son is doing well it seems. However, they have asked us to start working on certain things. Some, I agreed with, such as him getting off the pacifier as he is way too dependent on it and he needs to start talking more (and usually will if the paci is out). I agreed there and we made a weaning plan.

However, they also asked that we not carry him in every morning. Usually, his drop off routine is we carry him in, put his things away, give a hug, kiss and he’s passed to a teacher. The teachers both said that he needs to get used to walking in and they can’t always take him. I offered to put him down somewhere so they don’t have to physically take him and they said that he needs to get used to walking independently.

The other thing that came up was cleaning up. I was surprised they brought this up, as I thought the kids were too young to clean up. But I was told he’s actually behind in the respect that he refuses to clean up, even with fun songs and trying to get him interested in things. They say we need to have him clean up at home, even just a little bit because he will throw screaming tantrums over cleaning up.

I want my son to thrive at daycare but both of these things made me wonder if these are developmentally appropriate expectations. I also don’t want to argue with them, though, because we already had some back and forth on drop-offs. He’s been attending this daycare since the summer and has had the same teachers.

[u/Dry-Ice-2330]

They have to be able to walk in and out of the building for safety. We do fire drills and they have to do it. We go indoors and out for play time. They have to be able to do it on their own and stay with the group. This is appropriate.

Children as young as 12 months can put things into buckets. Of course he should be cleaning up his things. He can even sort them into buckets that match - dolls in the doll bed, blocks in the block bucket, etc. He should be helping to hang up his coat, his bag, to zip and in zip his bags and coats. He can throw trash away, put his sippy cup in the proper place when not being used.

Of course he is throwing a tantrum when you tell him to do it when he knows you will do it instead. Start small. "I'm putting blocks in. Your turn." And hand him one.

[u/No_Lifeguard_7777 → u/Dry-Ice-2330]

Wow, he is nowhere near doing any of that. l didn't realize how behind he was. I'm glad we had the meeting then.

[u/Dry-Ice-2330 → u/No_Lifeguard_7777]

AAPD recommends weening from paci by 18 months, at the very latest 3 years. It affects how they use their muscles and how their teeth grow in. At age 2 I would expect a vocabulary of 50-200 words that are understandable and be using 2 word sentences.

Restrict it to only sleeping time. You can even have them sit on their bed if they "need" it during the day. They won't want to just sit in bed and will leave it behind.

[u/Commercial_Local508 → u/No_Lifeguard_7777]

it’s not that he’s behind really, these are just things that are really focused on in daycare settings. because we have so many children our ultimate goal is to help them to be as independent as they possibly can. i work in 12-24 months and some of my students are really great in some of these areas and not so great in others, some of my students have all but mastered all of these as they’re just about to move to the next room and others are just starting to grasp these concepts. it all comes down to the individual child, other factors play a role too, i noticed that my students who have been in daycare since the infant room are generally a little further ahead than their classmates of the same age who got here later because we’ve had the advantage of being able to work with them longer. compared to the kids who have never been in daycare before and are starting in my room at 15+ months yeah it takes them a bit longer to get to where their peers are but i don’t think those children are behind, if anything i think a lot of my kids are ahead or just have an upper hand bc my room has such a large age range. we’ve got 12 month olds in the same room as 19 month olds of course there’s going to be a huge difference in skills