Or The Age of Separateness?
When our kids are small, less than two years, most of the time they promptly do what we ask them to with relative ease. When they reach the terrible twos or the Age of Separation, we the parents will become a kind of ghost because it seems that our kids do not see us, much less hear us. This of course is very frustrating because our little angel seems to have disappeared.
The good news is that the angel is still there, we just have to find it again. First we must recognize that our little kid is already an independent human being, or at least that’s what he or she believes. At this age, children realize they can do things for themselves and they do not need us.
How can we help everyone, because helping our children at this stage, we help ourselves to be a little more in peace. In the book Your Child’s Self-Esteem, Dorothy Briggs Corkille gives us a couple of suggestions. She say:
1. Fit his environment to his needs. Childproofed home.
The important to make a childproofed home, is that the child can move freely around the house and so give them their space, because the terrible twos or the 
age of separation is but a struggle of the child to do what he or she wants when he or she wants.
We must remember that we should always be closely supervise them because a child’s imagination has no limit. I remember once that my second child got into the dryer and the other two were closing the door, I was in the kitchen, luckily near them to realize what was happening.
2. Advance notice.
This work excelent. Because at times is not easy for adults to stop doing one thing to do another. For example, when food is served sometimes I have to call my husband three times so that he stop what he is doing and come to the table. Imagine what happens to kids.
When it’s time to sleep or turn off the television we can tell them ‘In five minutes it’s time to turn light off.’ That is, if we want them lie down at 8:00 pm, at 7:50 pm we give the first warning ‘5 minutes to turn lights off’ and it is likely that after the first five minutes our kids will ask us ‘5 more minutes please’ (their way to do what they want). At the end, we both win, they lie down at 8:00 pm and they got what they asked for ‘5 more minutes please.’
The following week we’ll talk about the other two suggestions of Dorothy. Finally I leave you with this amazing paragraph written by Don Miguel Ruiz in his book «The Four Agreements,»
If we see a child who is two or three, perhaps four years old, we find a free human. Why is this human free? Because this human does whatever he or she wants to do. The human is completely wild. Just like a flower, a tree, or an animal that has not been domesticated – wild! And if we observe humans who are two years old, we find that most of the time these humans have a big smile on their face and they’re having fun. They are exploring the world. They are not afraid to play. They are afraid when they are hurt, when they are hungry, when some of their needs are not met, but they don’t worry about the past, don’t care about the future, and only live in the present moment.
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