December 12, 2016.
According to a study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of California Merced and the University of Illinois, in the United States, a 2-year-old child understands perfectly words and situations, even complex ones.
Don’t take your 2-year-old for a baby
A 2-year-old is no longer a baby. Admittedly, he is not necessarily clean, but he is awake enough to understand a lot of things. This is in any case what reveals a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). According to this work, parents no longer need to simplify their language and behavior with children of this age.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers subjected 140 children to a test called: ” the false belief task “. His goal: to determine if the child can understand that someone might have a point of view different from theirs. However, they were able to observe that 2 year olds were able to understand what lying was and could see when someone tried to withhold information from them.
Do not tell your child everything, however
The researchers also found that children who had older brothers or sisters were more able to discern when trying to hide something from them. Suddenly, it is essential that at this stage of development, parents stop talking to their child like a baby.
Another interesting information: 2-year-olds do indeed understand when an attempt is made to manipulate them, but cannot express it, because this represents too much information to formulate. Around the age of 4 or 5, your child will be able to clearly ask you about your intentions when he has the impression that you are hiding information from him.. But be careful, just because your child feels that you are not telling him everything does not mean that you have to tell him everything. At each age, its learning.
Read also: How are language and speech disorders characterized?
