Parenting / Jan Faull
Engage toddler's intellect with sorting games

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A dad in a parenting class talked of his 2-1/2-year-old son's ability to categorize vehicles into groups.

From his car seat, the child could verbally sort not only cars from trucks and buses, but SUVs from vans and station wagons.

Because a toddler's brain is equipped to sort objects and people into categories and because most parents are eager to engage with their toddlers in mind- and brain-building activities, playing games that involve sorting and grouping is a positive and appropriate way to engage a toddler's intellect while building the parent-child relationship along the way.

While this youngster seemed particularly skilled in sorting out all the vehicles on the road, most toddlers at about 18 months can take a pile of two distinct objects and sort them into their individual group.

Set before your toddler a pile of, say, small plastic toy horses and miniature toy cars. Watch to see if your child, after a bit of observation and touching, separates them out into two piles.

If your child doesn't, make it a little game. You take one horse and one car from the pile and then ask your child to do the same. After very little prompting, your child will play along with the sorting game.

The child's mind, somewhere between age 1 and 2, becomes equipped to complete this task. He enjoys it, and in doing so, makes sense of the world around him.

Think of what the world would be like if the mind was not able to group objects by their similarities and differences. Each object would be its own entity to understand. Since the human brain can quickly classify, leaning is more efficient. Children learn girls from boys, men from women, people from animals. They can quickly classify insects, mammals, birds and reptiles.

Then as children get a bit older, they tend to over-classify. One 4-year-old made this erroneous attempt at classification by saying to his mother, "All mommies stay at home, and all daddies work." Now, the world would be an easy place for the child to understand if he could make this sweeping generalization, but since the child's thinking was obviously limited, the parent needed to challenge this simplistic approach.
 
The ironic aspect to this little anecdote was that the statement didn't even come from the child's experience. His mother had always worked part-time outside the home. The father, although a full-time employee working outside the home, also cared for the children and did household tasks.

So the mother challenged the child's thinking by saying, "Some moms stay at home, but they still do a lot of work. Some moms work outside the home for pay, but then when at home also work. Sometimes dads work at home while the mom works outside the home."

She went on for a bit, pointing out to her son the error in his immature attempt to group people. Parents need to do this when their children make erroneous generalizations, thereby giving children ideas about just what can be easily categorized and what can't be.

Jan Faull, a specialist in child development and behavior, answers questions of general interest in her column. You can e-mail her at janfaull@aol.com or write to: Jan Faull, c/o Families, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists