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The most effective way to avoid toddler tantrums is to prevent them from developing in your child in the first place. Waiting until your child starts displaying this type of behavior, perhaps on the hopeful fantasy that they won't, is foolhardy at best.

The time to mitigate and minimize toddler tantrums is when your child is still a baby! If you are reading this article because you already have a toddler that throws tantrums, I sympathize and will offer some possibilities to reduce these at the end of this article, but my primary focus here is information to help avoid this behavior developing in the first place.

The societies we now live in are significantly different to those that are natural to the human species. We are often told that babies crying is perfectly natural, but quite simply this is not true. As an omnivorous species we are in the upper range of dominant species, but it is our adaptability, dexterity and intelligence that have enabled us to become the dominant species on the planet through our technology. On the basis of our natural, biological capabilities we are inferior to the larger carnivorous predators. How many, if any, of us could survive direct interaction with a tiger without weapons? So it is natural for human babies to be quiet, so as to not attract the attention of potential predators.

Babies initially display needs through body posture and motion; facial expressions, squirming and grasping gestures with their hands all signal a requirement for attention. It is only when this fails to result in the needed attention of an adult that babies resort to the aural imperative of crying.

The natural human social structure is communal rather than the current concept of the nuclear family. In these circumstances there is an abundance of adults available to attend the needs of a baby or child; they might be the parents or grandparents of the child, uncles or aunts or totally unrelated adult members of the community. This availability in the past has meant that the young have been responded to rapidly.

Reverting to these past systems is probably not feasible for most of us, but recognizing the abnormality of our current social structures and their impact on our children's development shouldn't be. Nurturing your child does not "spoil" them. Doing so meets their natural needs instead of imposing an unnatural behavioral repertoire upon them, one that has lead to many of the social problems we face now in our communities.

When my daughter was

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