With all the talk at Moxie about three-year olds, I thought I'd post about this next major stage transition in development. More specifically, the transition happens around 3 1/2 years old. This age brings so many fascinating new cognitive capacities and they're linked to a whole host of emotional changes. And of course, if you're following along at home, this transition period means possible sleep setbacks. It's also not a stage that I'd recommend trying to change sleep habits (around 3 is fine, around 4 is good again, but this middle period can be tough).
Here's an excerpt from Bedtiming that explains what's going on in the child's mind at this age:
"The biggest change that happens in the young preschooler is that they acquire what developmentalists call "theory of mind." Theory
of mind is the understanding that other people have their own goals,
feelings, internal states, thoughts, and opinions. In short, other people have
minds of their own, and the contents of those minds are very often
different from the contents of one’s own mind. False-belief
understanding marks the culmination of theory of mind: the child can
now predict that other people will believe whatever they perceive
through their own senses, regardless of whether it’s true or false.
Many studies have demonstrated that 4-year-old children understand this
basic principle of human perception, while 3-year-olds do not. By the
age of 3 ½ to 4, when children can separate their own beliefs from the
beliefs of others, they have undertaken a remarkable shift in social
understanding. They have now begun to glean that each mind is like a
chamber filled with its own perceptions of the world, and no two minds
need ever see the world in the same way.
[Here's a video that explains the idea quite well and gives you a sense of how developmental researchers test kids for theory of mind (at least the first half)]
Understanding that your parents have minds of their own can be quite a shock at first. Up until now, you took it for granted that Mom saw things the way you did. In fact, you didn’t have to explain to her how you saw things, because there was only one way to see things: the way they really are. Now that people’s beliefs are seen to be private affairs, carried around in their own heads and not accessible to others, a number of issues have to be worked out. When my stepdaughter was 3.5 years old, she rode on the back of her father's bicycle to nursery school every day from her third birthday on. She would typically point to interesting sights as they rode by, saying, “That flower is blue! That boy has a funny hat!” and so forth. Around the age of 3 years and 4 months, however, her language changed. She began to phrase these comments as questions rather than statements: “Did you see the blue flower? Do you think that hat is funny?” She was clearly conceding that his reality was not the same as hers. But other changes were less cheerful in tone. At exactly the same age, she would be sitting at the table eating her cereal when her father came downstairs, and she would shout “Don’t look at me!” While turning her head away or hiding behind her cereal box. WTF, why did she freak out with no apparent trigger? If your parents have minds of their own, and if you don’t know what’s inside them, then you might well worry. They might be looking at you, and they might be thinking…anything! They might be thinking that you just spilled your cereal, or that you were supposed to wait, or, more generally, that you’re a bad, selfish little girl. How would you know?
In this way, false-belief understanding can be a ticket to a new suite of insecurities. A private mind, with its own thoughts and beliefs, might harbour thoughts about you that aren’t very nice. I've come across so many parents' stories that keep reinforcing how huge this change is. Parents of 3 ½ -year-old children have told me that their daughter suddenly stopped letting them hear her sing. “Go away! Don’t listen!” Or “Don’t look at me!” Or “Go away until I tell you!” This is often also the age where children suddenly stop letting their parents help them at the potty, if they’ve been potty-trained for a while. These reactions suggested extreme self-consciousness. These kids apparently worried about being seen, or being heard, because there was something about themselves that might not live up to such scrutiny. Something unpleasant, or greedy, or bad. In fact, false-belief understanding seemed to bring about a spurt of intense shame reactions."
There are more implications to this shift, including the ability to feel true empathy (in a way that has never been there before) and the unfortunate ability and motivation to lie. We'll talk more about these in the days to come.
The reason why sleep goes all to hell for lots of kids at this age may be due to all these incredible cognitive and emotional changes they're experiencing. At around three and a half, when children try to fall asleep at bedtime or try to put themselve BACK to sleep in the middle of the night, they may be experiencing the creeping insecurities and anxieties that accompany the dawning of a whole new suite of emotional and social perceptions. That's a whole lot of new stuff that they're trying to sort out and as I rush headlong into this new stage with my own two boys, I want to keep their little minds in mind for the next few months.
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