Habit training–start now! To little ones like yours, house-cleaning is playtime, so you can start with the habit of orderliness. Even the 1.5yo can come alongside you to pick up toys, and they will think it’s fun. You can even sing an annoying clean-up song, the kind that makes me wish I’d never met a certain purple dinosaur…..ever….
The 3yo can help you put away your non-sharp cutlery if you put her in a high chair near the drawer that they go in. This will also build sorting skills for math. And you can tell her that is her chore or job and praise her for a job well done.
I would also work on treating others with respect. We have probably all been guilty of expressing a giggle or two at a toddler making a face or sticking out the tongue, but it’s not cute to permit them to respond disrespectfully to your requests or to correction. Tolerance of disrespect can lead to back-talk, rolling the eyes, sowing seeds of disrespect towards parents among siblings, and more as they get older. I used to tell my kids that even rolling their eyes at me meant I was not getting “immediate obedience” from them since they had paused and taken the time to roll their eyes…..but that’s a comment for an older child, not a toddler. I would work on respectful responses even at this age.
