“When their expectations aren’t met, toddlers have lost control. “All the connections in their brains aren’t made yet,” says Dr. What toddlers do understand is that when something is different than the day before, it sets them off. A kid can master crawling through repetition, but that doesn’t mean they will grasp the concept of why they need to put on shoes. The brain doesn’t grow in the exact same way as the rest of the body. Since they’re not Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can’t assume a child will have total, or even partial, recall.

In fact, kids younger than 7 are basically hardwired to not store many memories. “Everything for toddlers is new and exciting they don’t have a wealth of experience on how to judge things,” says Dr. These are schemas to organize situations. Your Kid Is Dory From Finding NemoĪdults have mental models based on experience and the memory of how things should work. Here’s why your kid’s still-forming gray matter makes their behavior anything but black and white.

Burnett is also father to a 4-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter, so this is basically applied science. Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist (and author of the Idiot Brain, and Guardian columnist who moonlights as a stand-up comic), says that the early days of brain development are fascinating because all of the connections needed throughout life are forming and coming together. “Why are you flopping on the ground?” “Why are you biting me for no particular reason?” “Why are you peeing yourself while maintaining eye contact?” The biggest issue is that you don’t know what they’re thinking, and they can’t tell you yet. As the parent of a toddler, your big adult mind is always trying to make sense of what’s going through their tiny kid one.

Dean burnett neuroscientist