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BY Ad Kids | 01-29-2009 | 5:48 PM

This blog is written by a member of our blogging community and expresses that member's views alone.

Understanding What You Say
One very important sign that your baby is learning to talk is that he or she understands more and more of what you say. Words such as Mommy, Daddy, baby, shoe, ball, juice and cookie are probably understood now, or will be soon. A baby may now also understand names of family members or pets.

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24 to 36 Months
The two-year mark ushers in twos' programs, preschool, and play dates, which are great for your child's socialization skills but also present a new set of discipline problems. Sharing -- toys, time, and attention -- is difficult at this age. What complicates matters further is that folks (and kids!) outside your family may end up in the path of a toy-snatching toddler who happens to belong to you.

Toddlers understand easy commands, empathy, and cause and effect, so you can now employ these concepts when you discipline. If your child grabs a crayon from his friend, for example, you can say, "We don't grab toys. Taking Billy's crayon hurts his feelings," and then give him a similar crayon to play with.

A key to disciplining toddlers and preschoolers is to keep things very simple. According to a study conducted by Susan G. O'Leary, PhD, professor of psychology at The State University of New York at Stony Brook, those moms with long reprimands were less effective than those with short and direct ones.

Susan Simmons of South Riding, Virginia, the mother of 2-1/2-year-old Mia, agrees. "When Mia hit 2, I started giving her long explanations as to why she couldn't do something, but I realized she didn't understand. Now when she wants to have an ice pop before dinner, I just say 'You can't have one now,' and leave it at that."

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About AD Kids Inc: Famous First Words
When babies are about 10 months old, they may suddenly produce their first recognizable words. More often than not, the very first words are 'Da-da' and 'Ma-ma.' These utterances are really abbreviations of words. 'Ba' is short for bottle, 'cuh' for cup, 'mo' for more and 'soo' for shoe. For the time being, simple sounds like these are all a baby can manage, and they're easy enough for parents to translate.
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What to do:
Take the time to talk with your toddler. Include him in the conversation. As you're talking to your older children about soccer say to your toddler, "Let's go see the soccer game. They run fast. We can sit in the bleachers and watch the kids kick the ball."

Mom and Dad need to make time to talk with their toddler, as well as with their older children who can already talk. Sit on the floor and play with your toddler. Use toy animals to describe actions. A cow can run, walk and sit. Stimulate speech sounds by making animal sounds, "Moo goes the cow." As you're making supper, talk about the ingredients you're using and ask your toddler for help, "Can you please get Mommy the pan?" Encourage talking while stirring the pot together, "Stir, stir, stir." Show your child an egg and use a fill-in-the-blank sentence: "Put in the..."

Always reinforce any communication attempt by saying, "Nice talking. I like the way you use your words." Consider this your toddler's "homework time."

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AD Kids Inc.: What's next
As preschoolers get more adept at using crayons and pencils, they'll start making more elaborate and accurate drawings. Between his second and fifth birthdays, your child will learn to make horizontal lines, to copy a circle and a square, and to draw people. Once he starts elementary school, he'll soon learn to read and write.

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Not-so-innocent Bystanders
So how do you deal with strangers interfering when your child is acting up? For 45-year-old Mary Schnack of Sedona, Ariz., it was something she had to deal with regularly. Her daughter, now 19, is learning disabled and suffers from ADHD. She also has problems with impulse control and understanding cause and effect.

While Schnack says she never physically disciplined her child, she did have to be firm in public such as not letting go of her hand to keep her from wandering off. "I did get reactions from people that I was abusing my child," she says. "A store clerk asked me to either stop hurting my child or leave the store."

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Babbling
A baby may also begin what psychologists call 'jargon' or 'pseudo' conversations. Your baby will babble just as if talking in sentencesâ€“imitating an adult's speech pattern, facial expression and tone of voice. This conversational babble is another sure sign that your baby is getting ready to talk. Keep Talking!

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Is Temperament Genetic?
Despite a growing body of research, there is no definitive answer to why children are endowed with certain temperamental traits. But studies suggest that it is at least partially genetic. This does not mean that two shy parents are destined to have shy children, or if you have trouble finishing tasks your child will too. In fact, researchers have no definite way of predicting a child's temperament based on that of their parents (siblings, even identical twins, can have very different temperaments).

At What Age Can I Determine My Child's Temperament?
There is some debate about how early a parent can detect a child's temperament. Carey and his colleagues designed five sets of questionnaires for parents, including one for infants between the ages of one and four months old. They found that the nine traits identified by Thomas and Chess were discernable in this very early period. But they have yet to determine how stable these traits remain over a child's lifetime.
Kathy Oliver M.S., Family and Consumer Sciences Agent at Ohio State University Extension, says that some traits, including rhythmicity, distractibility, and activity level are evident in the first few weeks.
"I nursed both my babies," says Oliver. "And there was a big difference in how distractible they were. When my son was at the breast that is where he was. With my daughter, any little movement or noise would cause her to wriggle and look around. She is still that way and she is thirteen now."
Does this mean that if your infant seems highly distractible he will inevitably face problems in school? Or if you cannot set your watch by your newborn's bowel movements you are destined to raise a "difficult" child? Absolutely not.
Although temperament is inborn and at least partially genetic, it is not static. How well a parent understands and accepts their child's temperament can have a dramatic impact on how each trait will manifest itself.