As I came home from work, our nanny described how my 3 year old had been throwing objects several times a day and would not stop when asked to. I had only encountered that when she was upset, but the nanny said: no, she was not upset, she thought it was funny, but would not stop when redirected. I was surprised, something new. That night we received an Amazon package with Model Magic play dough. The colors were wrapped in individual small packages in the box. My 3y old was excited about the clay and took all 20 small packages out of the box. They were small, light and soft. I took one, threw it across the room and made a funny face. Sitting on the floor I said: hopefully nobody will throw these at me, with an inviting expression. And of course my 3 year old did not need more invitations and we started a snowball fight with the playdough packages. The 14month old happily joined in the fun. I kept falling over with each hit, or not hit. And they had a blast. I threw packages back at them, missing most of the time and getting quite upset about missing. We played until they lost interest and moved on to other tasks. I don’t know why she wanted to throw things, but I thought it was a good proactive idea to give her a safe space to do this as much as she wanted. AND we had FUN - This seems to be a playful experience that she wants to experiment with, so I made a little basket with throw toys and I sometimes initiate different variations of the game. It added to the fun options we have as a family and we have not seen any throwing of objects outside of this game. In the past I had seen her throw objects in anger when upset, but this behavior has vanished as well.
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