Are We Making Toddlerhood Too Complicated? Ep 144

Parents have never had more information about early childhood than they do today. 

We track sleep, research milestones, optimize toys, and fill our days with activities meant to help our toddlers thrive.

And yet - many parents quietly wonder why their child still feels overwhelmed, dysregulated, or unsettled.

In this episode, I explore a difficult but hopeful question:

Have we made toddlerhood too complicated?

Drawing from nearly four decades of clinical experience, I unpack how environment shapes a developing nervous system — and why connection, rhythm, and presence matter more than programs or products.

We’ll look at:
 • The rising normalization of dysregulation
 • How overstimulation impacts language and behavior
 • Why waiting and presence are biologically powerful
 • What to begin noticing before changing anything

This episode is not about doing more.

It’s about noticing more.

If you’ve been wondering whether something in your home rhythm feels “off,” this conversation will help you see more clearly — and more calmly.

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If you’d like support identifying where your family is in this journey, I invite you to schedule a Discovery Call. We’ll look at what’s already working - and what small, intentional shifts could make the biggest difference right now.

👉 Book a Discovery Call

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

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DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Transcript

Erin: 0:00

We say things like, all toddlers are picky eaters, all kids meltdown. It's just being two. They'll outgrow it he's just a boy. She's dramatic. And sometimes that's true. Toddlers are toddlers and development is messy and non-linear and wonderfully unpredictable. Is this how I want my home to feel normal and optimal, or not the same thing? And you get to decide which one you are building toward. I want to ask you a question that. I just want you to sit with for a while. What if some of what we're calling normal is actually a nervous system that has been quietly overwhelmed for a long time. What if Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Parents today have never had more information, more tools, or spent more money on the first three years of life. And yet I'm seeing more toddlers who are restless, more easily overwhelmed, more distracted, more dysregulated. And then more parents quietly wondering why all their effort doesn't feel like it's working. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're in the middle of it right now. Reading everything, trying everything, doing all the right things and something still feels off. That's not random. But something about the way we have normalized early childhood isn't helping. In fact, some of what we're doing may be quietly working against the very outcomes we are striving for. I want to name that today. Not to alarm you. But because these first three years set the patterns that are so much easier to build in the upfront, in the beginning, than they are to rebuild later on. And I believe that you deserve to know that now, while you still have every opportunity right in front of you. We are trying harder than any generation of parents before us. We track wake windows, we monitor ounces, we research sleep regressions. We read reviews before buying a single toy. We buy the bassinet, that rocks itself, the monitor that tracks breathing, the subscription boxes. We seem to sterilize and optimize and then research and then wake up and do it all again tomorrow. And yet something still feels off, something underneath. All of that effort feels like it isn't landing the way that we actually hoped. Let's take a look at 150 years ago, parents didn't have any of that. Children's grew up inside housework and yard work around shared meals, familiar family voices. They grew up in outdoor spaces with mud pies and picnics and long afternoons where no one had to be anywhere. No one was accelerating developmental milestones, pushing, crawling, or walking. No one was anxiously tracking whether babbling counted or not. No one was trying to optimize their toddler, and yet children walked and talked and learned and built resilience. Why? Because early development is not complicated. It never was. I believe it's beautifully, profoundly simple, and somewhere along the way we, us humans, we've drifted from that simplicity and started mistaking busyness for progress or growth. I believe this deeply, God's design for early childhood was not complicated or chaotic. It was rhythmic. It was relational. It was embedded in everyday life. A man and a woman, a child, a family, a world. The sun rose the sunset. We work, we rest. It was a rhythm. Children were designed to wake up with the morning light to move their bodies throughout the day to eat real food. To hear familiar voices, to watch real work happen around them, and slowly, gradually begin to participate in it. When a toddler watched bread being made, or laundry being folded, or even the animals being fed, they were quietly building sequencing vocabulary. Motor planning, patience, cause and effect without anyone ever calling it development, without a curriculum, without a plan. Just life and life was enough. The more we try to control every outcome, the more we interrupt that natural sequence. The more we rush the timing and growth and development, the more we create stress where there was only meant to be ease. Here's something I want all of us to sit with. Waiting is not passive. Waiting is integration. Presence is not small. Presence actually regulates the nervous system. That's not theology, that's neuroscience. and I think it's one of the most hopeful things I can share with you. I wanna stay here for just a moment because this is where nearly four decades of my clinical practice meets something I find genuinely beautiful about how children are made. Think about a moment in your life when your toddler looked up at you, I mean, really looked at you and you looked back for a moment or two. It was just you both gazing into each other. Nothing else was competing for your attention or your time or your thought. Her eyes found yours and stayed there. Something was wiring inside her brain at that moment, not because you said anything, not because there was a toy or a lesson or a carefully chosen activity to involve her in, but because how you looked at her and she responded, that's not a metaphor. That's developmental neuroscience. The brain wires through repetition, specifically through experiences that are safe and relational and emotionally connected. When your child is calm and close to you. Her brain builds upward and outward language grows. Understanding, grows the capacity to regulate. Her own emotions grow, but when she feels overstimulated, rushed, tired, her nervous system does something very specific. It shifts into protection mode and a brain in protection mode isn't wiring language, it's wiring survival. Those are two very different things, and here's the part I want you to really hold onto. Language doesn't begin with words. It begins with everything that comes before words. Your tone. Your facial expressions, your body and your body language, your rhythm, your attention, your heart connection is the soil that language grows in. and when we fill your child's day with noise and stimulation and constant transition before that soil is ready, development doesn't speed up. It struggles. Not because your child can't do it, but because the environment isn't giving her the quiet or the time or space, she needs to process what's happening around her. That's why Simpler works not as a philosophy as biology. If we keep trying to build development through activities and things, we will miss the relational regulated moments that actually shape your child's brain. We have mistaken complexity and busyness for growth, but early development is simple connection, regulation, repetition. Rhythm and patterns. That's it. That's the whole blueprint. When we don't trust that simplicity, we start outsourcing the work to products and things, to programs, to the next piece of advice that you're scrolling through. And I understand why. Because when you love someone that much, doing nothing feels wrong. Doing more feels like love. It feels like your duty, but your baby and your toddler doesn't need more. Your toddler needs you, your time, your patience, your steadiness, your real imperfect, authentic self, showing up in the ordinary moments, sprinkled throughout the day, not perfection. Not performance, not constant optimization, which honestly is just a fancy word thrown about for structured activities dressed up in language development. I know that that can feel heavy to hear at Less is more, but here's the other side of it. It also means you already have what your child needs most. You don't have to run out and buy anything. You don't have to build it. You don't have to find it somewhere. You just have to be present for it. I want to name something that I think most parenting content out there on social media is too careful to say out loud. Some of what we have normalized in early childhood isn't just neutral or benign. Some of it is quietly shaping our children in ways we haven't fully connected yet, and the hardest part. We often can't see it because we're too close to it. We're inside the moments. it's also been normalized because everyone around us is doing the same thing. We say things like, all toddlers are picky eaters, all kids meltdown. It's just. Being two. Right? They'll outgrow it or he's just a boy. That's how they are. She's dramatic. And sometimes that's true. Toddlers are toddlers and development is messy and non-linear and wonderfully unpredictable. But I have spent nearly four decades watching children and playing with children and being in it with them. And I want to ask you a question that. I just want you to sit with for a while. What if some of what we're calling normal is actually a nervous system that has been quietly overwhelmed for a long time. What if constant background noise, disrupted sleep, ultra processed foods, a lack of outdoor movement? Screens used to soothe little ones instead of a person used to co-regulate. What if rushed transitions and days with very little real emotional eye contact are shaping the behaviors we eventually label as. Hmm, that's who she is. She's sensitive or he's just an a boy. She's shy. He's not a good sleeper. I've seen this pattern more times than I want to count, and the data reflects it too. Over the last several decades, rates of attention, challenges, anxiety, sensory processing difficulties, and developmental delays across the board. With young children, with preschoolers, school aged children, they have all risen significantly. I've treated many of them. I've sat with the parents and almost without exception, the parents loved their children deeply. That was never the question. The question for me has always been the environment because environment shapes, biology. And that's not my opinion. that is how the developing brain works. That is how human beings work, and here's the part that matters most. Environment is something we all can influence. We can start and choose today, right now, not with an overhaul, not out of guilt, and not with a new program. Just with awareness, just with a willingness to look at your daily life and ask, Hmm, is this the rhythm that I actually want to create? Is this how I want my home to feel normal and optimal, or not the same thing? And you get to decide which one you are building toward. So. What does that actually look like in a real day? Let me give you a small example. When your toddler wakes up from his nap, before you even open the door, I want you to pause, take one breath, leave whatever you're carrying right there in the hallway. This is the moment that belongs to him When you walk in. What do you actually see? Is he standing and calling for you? Is he lying quietly, still talking to himself, running through some cute little babble sounds? Is she rubbing her eyes not quite ready to wake up? Does he notice you in that split second when you come in and then when you pick him up, does he just melt into your arms or does he push you away? Look around, eager to get down and get going to the next thing that tells you something. All of that, that's his nervous system speaking to you before he has words for it. And then are you present in that moment? Are you really there with him or are you mentally moving through your next task and you're thinking, okay, let's get the diaper, let's get a snack. I have things to do before, you know, I go pick up the other kids or before I make my phone call, are you running through all of that list in your head and not really being in the moment? There's no judgment in these questions. I've been there. We've all been there. We all know what it feels like, but noticing the difference between those two experiences for him and for you. That's where everything rests. That's where everything starts. When you offer him a snack after that nap, do you pull him into the moment? Yeah. Do you let him wash the strawberries or count the cheese cubes or pick which bowl do you want? Or is it just fuel Get get'em fed. Gotta get'em fed handed over efficiently. Right. Get in the chair and then we have to move on to the next task. What's your pace? What's your rhythm? Noticing something. Noticing your moments throughout the day actually means slowing down long enough to read what's actually happening before you give direction or guidance or want to correct watching first meeting him where he is before deciding where you wanna take him. Right? It sounds simple. And you know, it really is, but simple doesn't always mean easy. So here is what I, I wanna give you one assignment for the next seven days, and I mean it just one simple. Not always easy, but simple assignment, and this is the only thing that I really want to encourage you to do. I don't want you to change a thing. I don't want you to go out and buy anything. I don't want you to add a new strategy or, or even remove anything, right? No overhaul, nothing. I just want you to begin to truly notice. I want you to play detective with two things, your toddler state, and then your pacing, because you genuinely cannot improve what you haven't yet identified. So here are four simple markers to pay attention to this week, and I I, you can write them down or, or listen to them, but the first one is transitions. How many moments in your day feel rushed? Look at waking up diaper changes, getting into the car and out of the car. Your meals, your bedtime routine. I just want you to notice how many transitions there are. And then how do they feel? The second thing is background noise. How often is something playing in the background? A TV music podcast, a show? Well, you are trying to connect and being with your baby and your toddler. What's going on in the background? There's no judgment here. I just want you to begin to notice and then look at those connection moments. How many times a day do you really truly get face to face with your little one? Without multitasking, without thoughts drifting here and there, but truly in it with them at the same time. Right, that you feel the difference when both of you are truly in it and engaged with each other, how many times? And then the fourth one is movement and outside time, right? How much time does your toddler spend actually moving their body by themselves, right? You are up moving them, but ideally time outside as well. Every day. Movement and outside. that's it. No guilt. No pressure, just data. You're just being a detective because clarity can lead you to courage. But first, you need to know where you are and you can't build a better rhythm without knowing where to start from. So here's what I want to leave you with today. Okay. Development doesn't need you to do more. It needs your attention. State pace, sound connection, movement. Notice those five things this week. Let me say them one more time. Right. State pace, sound connection, movement. That's where development actually lives. Not in the products or the toys or the programs or the perfectly planned activities And before you go try this on as a kind of daily practice, think of it as to notice your state or his state before any strategy. To notice your level of connection before correction, to notice the rhythm you feel before your reaction to that moment, to notice your tone that you're bringing into that, that experience before your actual words. And then to notice those transitions before, you know, expecting behavior. Where are they? If you do nothing else this week, practice those five. That's enough. That is genuinely enough for you to really understand where are you now and how are you building this home environment, which is his learning laboratory. And over the next several weeks, I have planned a whole series. I want. To help you all move from doing more to noticing more. I wanna help you see what your daily environment is quietly building inside your child's brain, because that's where language grows. That's where understanding grows. That's where regulation and connection grows. These years matter so much. And I truly know in my heart, they are not complicated. They were never meant to be complicated. they're simple and powerful and absolutely worth protecting. Next week, we'll look at one of the most overlooked disruptors in early development. Something so common that most homes don't even notice it anymore, and that's background noise. Once you begin to see it for what it is, you won't be able to unsee it. And I'm excited to share this with you because it can really shift and move the needle in the right direction. and one more thing before I let you go. If you're listening to this and something in you is quietly wondering, Hmm, is this my child? Is this my home? I want you to know that that question is worth following. That's exactly what my discovery calls are for. These calls actually serve two purposes, and I want to be upfront and honest about both of them with you. The first is simple. I want to hear directly from you in your own words, what's actually hard right now. What are you confused about or what? What do you wish someone would just simply, clearly answer? Right. After nearly four decades of clinical work, I still believe the most important thing I can do is stay close to what real moms are actually living. And these conversations help me make sure everything I create is truly serving you. The second purpose of these discovery calls is. If it feels like a good fit, there's an opportunity to work with me directly in my one-to-one coaching program. There's no pressure, no pitch, but if you've been listening and you're thinking, Hmm, I need more than just a podcast, the door is open. Either way. Most parents leave that call that we share together, that free 20 minute chat on Zoom, but they, they feel more clear about what's the next step. Not because the answers were hidden, but because it's generally hard for us. Any of us to read a label when we're inside the jar. So if you've been trying hard and it still feels like it's off, you don't have to keep guessing alone. So the link about the discovery calls are down below. I'd love to have a chat with you. So thanks for spending this time with me today. God bless, and I look forward to seeing you in the next talking toddlers.