As a mother of my 2 year old son. I am so careful on how to teach him different things especially this time, they called it terrible two or terrible years of the child wherein all of they see and they hear will eventually absorbed by thier mind and followed it afterwards.
It's been six months since we have stayed in my inlaws house because my husband stopped from his work and in that six months of staying here I noticed some changes on my son's development and behavior. As a parents, we are here for them as a guide as they faced the reality little by little and discovered things on thier own.
Before we stayed here, we were staying on my parents house where all the side has walls and the only people that my little one saw was me, my mother and my niece. The whole day passed inside our house or sometimes in the backyard. We only go outside the house during 5 PM when the sun already take his rest.
When we stayed here. My little one's environment has changed. From a silent environment to a noisy one. In my inlaws house there's no concrete walls, only bamboo walls and you can easily talked to your neighbors if you want. There are no boring days here because if you go outside there's a lot of people. The front of my inlaws house is a Tambayan because there's a long chair there and their neighbors always seat there and do chitchat. My little one has also a few cousins here who played a big part on my littles ones development.
I am happy seeing my little one enjoying outside and learned new things but like what Ive said, all that he saw and listened was absorbed by his mind and followed it. They like a living mirror. So parents should always be a guide whenever there's a circumstances that your little one learned bad things and good things
Here's my observations on my little one's development
Good side.
My little one learned to play with other kids. Before, I am the only one playing with him but now he has a lot of playmate here and I'm happy that he is engaging to other people and never felt shy or scared like other kids. It's also a way to be confident and a sign that he is independent and can go to other place without me.
He eats a lot. Before he never eated rice. He only eat cereal, pancake and biscuit. He was a picky eater and I am so much pressured that time because I want him to eat nutritious food but he didn't like it. Now I am so amazed by him, though he didn't eat vegetables still, he is now eating rice, egg and soup and I think it is because he see us eating in a table and he was attracted so that he also eat. Earlier he eat a rice porridge with mashed sweet potato and he said "Sap". It means delicious.
He is very talkative. Before he was a silent type boy. He was shy and afraid of people but now he was so talkative. He learned different words and phrases. Like everytime we eat he would say " Kainan na". and he repeated it to all of the family members. I remember when we went to the bridge to see the water level. He said " Mama, water big". His father laughed at him and said " Ang dami mong Alam" hahaha. I also remember when I was cooking Tilapia and I clean it in the kitchen, my little said to his grandfather " Mama patay fish". Sometimes I am wondering where he did learned those phrases haha.
Bad sides
I let my little one to play with other kids but the bad side of that was he also absorbed the wrong doings of the kids and I witnessed it everytime I saw him doing it too.
Like in the cat. Before he loves miming. He would said " Mingming love" and he touched it sweetly but now he stamps his feet on the cat like he fights the kitten because he saw it on his cousins.
I saw him spitting on the ground. I was shocked because he did that and I know he did that because he saw it to other people because people here spit at the ground like what the.. Haysss., When those incident happened I told my son that those acts were bad and don't repeat it again.
Another one was wearing the slipper incorrectly. His cousin always wear his slipper incorrectly so my son also wear his slipper incorrectly because he thought that it's right so that I always observed him and corrected him and I know that it's effective. Wanna know why? I already tested it.
>When my little one was on the stage of learning words. Everytime he saw an Apple he said Bapbap and everytime he saw a cat he said Mimi and everytime he saw a chicken he said "Trrrr" A chicken sound. I let him say those words because it's cute in my ears but my husband told me that I should teached the right words to my son because he might carry it when grew up so what I did everytime he said Bapbap which is Apple, I said its not Bapbap baby, it's an Apple. I do it over and over until one time he can now pronounced it correctly.
I remember a passage on the Bible from Proverbs 22:6 saying:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
So I promised to myself that I will guide my son as long as I can. I will tell him what is good and what is bad in a right way until the time comes that he can decide for himself.
Yes, everything a child sees on that stage he will mimick so show appreciation when he did good and try to help him avoid doing the bad ones by encouraging him not to repeat it. And yep, we should talk to them saying the right words,that way they will learn to say the words correctly. When I have my first born, his paternal granny talks to him with baby words which he adopts some but I was firm on saying the right word so as not to confuse and he might grow up with those baby words,.