Toddlers this age are moving from the eating habits they had as infants toward a diet more like your own.

Your job is to keep introducing new flavors and textures. Food preferences are set early in life, so help your child develop a taste for healthy foods now.

Toddlers have little tummies, so serve foods that are packed with the nutrients they need to grow healthy and strong, and limit the sweets and empty calories.

Your toddler will continue to explore self-feeding, first with fingers and then with utensils at around 15 to 18 months of age. Give your child many opportunities to practice these skills, but lend a hand when frustrations arise. As skills develop, step back and let your little one take over.

Toddlers also like to assert their independence, and the table is one place where you should give yours some sense of control. Allow your toddler to respond to internal cues for hunger and fullness but set the boundaries.

Remember: You decide what variety of healthy foods to offer at a meal and your child decides which of those foods to eat, how much to eat, and whether to eat at all.

A Word About MilkMilk is an important part of a toddler's diet because it provides calcium and vitamin D, which help build strong bones. Kids under age 2 should drink whole milk for the dietary fats needed for normal growth and brain development.

When your child is 2, you can probably make the switch to low-fat or nonfat milk, but talk with your doctor before doing so.

Between 12 and 18 months of age is a good time for transition to a cup. Instead of cutting out bottles all at once, you can gradually eliminate them from the feeding schedule, starting with mealtime. Offer whole milk in a cup after the child has begun the meal. If you are breastfeeding, only offer milk in a cup and avoid the bottle habit altogether.

Some kids don't like cows milk at first because it's different from the breast milk or formula they're used to. If that's the case, it's OK to mix whole milk with formula or breast milk and gradually adjust the mixture so that it eventually becomes 100% cow's milk.

To see the original article and read more please click on this link: http://kidshealth.org/parent/pregnancy_newborn/breastfeed/feed12yr.html#cat20573

Research explains why toddlers have temper tantrums and the reasons behind bad behavior.

By Patty Onderko

navigated several steep flights of subway stairs, managed four train transfers, and arrived safely at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. I took photos of them in front of the giant Apatosaurus skeleton and imparted (probably erroneous, but who cares?) facts about the Jurassic era. I am the best. Mother. Ever!

To top off the special day, I decided to treat them to an educational toy at the gift shop. My son Theo wanted an astronaut, so I brought him to the space display and let him choose between three astronaut-themed items (I'm so smart to give my preschooler a sense of control by offering him a choice!). “No, astronaut!” he began to whine. “This is an astronaut,” I said brightly, pointing to one of the helmeted play figures. “No!” He then slapped all the items out of my hand and began screaming. Ten minutes later, after Theo had stomped on a dozen packages of freeze-dried ice cream, I tucked one boy under each arm and staggered out. I am the worst mother ever, I said to myself, embarrassed, drained, and near tears.

Turns out, the scene at the museum was not all my fault, and it doesn't mean my boy is “bad,” either. Michael Potegal, Ph.D., a pediatric neuropsychologist at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, has spent the latest part of his professional career studying tantrums and how and why young children have such brutally emotional explosions. And what has he learned in that time? That their outbursts are as normal a biological response to anger and frustration as a yawn is to fatigue. So normal, in fact, that you can make a science out of the progression of a tantrum and predict one down to the second. Kids from about 18 months to 4 years are simply hardwired to misbehave, he says. And that means “nurture” (i.e., you) isn't always to blame.

The Mush Behind the Madness: Your Tot's Noggin

Let's take a quick tour of the human brain, stopping at a little blob of gray matter behind the eyebrows called the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This is the part of the brain that regulates emotion and controls social behavior. It's also the last area of the brain to develop; it has only just begun to mature at age 4. That immaturity—as difficult as it makes parenting a toddler or a preschooler—may serve an important developmental role in the acquisition of language (the most significant social tool humans have), says a new report out of the University of Pennsylvania. The authors posit that the underdeveloped PFC is what allows young children to master a new language much more easily than adults. Simply put, our kids' more disagreeable behavior may be an evolutionary trade-off for the sake of human communication.

Okay, so they've got these mushy brain parts that make them prone to outbursts and irrational displays of emotion, but there's another factor at play in the toddler/preschooler's often difficult behavior: stress. “Kids this age think magically, not logically,” explains Gina Mireault, Ph.D., a professor ofpsychology at Johnson State College, in Vermont. “Events that are ordinary to us are confusing and scary to them. They don't understand that the bathtub drain won't swallow them or that their uncle can't really snatch their nose.” And if you're not sure whether or not a simple bath will end in your demise, needless to say, you're going to feel pretty confused and prone to anxiety—on a daily basis.

This feeling of heightened arousal causes our bodies to release cortisol, known as the “fight or flight” hormone. Maybe it should be called “tantrum juice:” Cortisol increases blood pressure, speeds up breathing rates, and may lead to confused or unclear thinking (sound like anyone you know?). This anxiety is developmentally typical in moderation, but chronic anxiety or stress--Is my stuffed Tigger going to come alive and eat me?—is not; it can turn kids into virtual bundles of kindling primed to ignite at the slightest provocation.

For more information please visit: http://www.parenting.com/article/toddler-temper-tantrums

2013 Recommended Immunizations for Children from Birth Through 6 Years Old: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/downloads/parent-ver-sch-0-6yrs.pdf  
 
2013 Recommended Immunizations for Children from 7 Through 18 Years Old:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/who/teens/downloads/parent-version-schedule-7-18yrs.pdf
 

EVER SINCE a small but groundbreaking study in 1995, it’s been accepted wisdom that a child’s academic success is directly related to the amount of talk the child hears from adults in the first few years of life. Children in higher-income families hear more language than those in lower-income families; this disparity, the theory runs, leads to a “word gap” that puts poorer children at a disadvantage when they enter school.

Now, the city of Providence is set to put this theory to the test through new high-tech means, in the much larger setting of a city population—and then try to narrow the word gap for children in real time. Earlier this month, the city won the $5 million grand prize in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge, based on its proposal for a project called Providence Talks. The plan is to equip low-income children with recording devices that calculate how many words they hear, and then coach parents on how to boost their children’s language exposure.

Through Providence Talks, researchers and policy makers are likely to learn much more about whether pulling this language lever can really help level the academic playing field. At the same time, however, by asking scores of regular parents to opt into massive, data-driven recording and analysis of all the language their children hear in their first few years, and then encouraging them to change the personal matter of how they talk to their kids as a result, they are launching a project of unprecedented scope and audacity—one that opens up fascinating questions about language, social engineering, privacy, and parenting.

To read more please click here: 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/03/23/providence-million-plan-shrink-word-gap/zwVX3JKvmsZChHVPimovbN/story.html