at what age do they realize consequences?

[tzs]

this is not so much for dd who is only 13 months but i work with kiddos who are around 18-24 months....

at what age do they start understanding natural/logical consequences???

like, if you push your chair away from the table you can't reach your food so you won't be able to eat until you somehow get it back....

or if you spend the whole lunchtime standing on the stepstool you will miss "num-nums."

or if you play with your milk it will be taken away.

i know at even an older age it would take some time and patience but is it completely age inappropriate for smaller toddlers?

[ChetMC]

Babies

I think a lot of kids start to make these kinds of connections as babies.

Lots of babies figure out that if they throw food they get taken out of their highchair, and so they start throwing food whenever they want out. Our forth was ten months old when he figured out that throwing toys down the stairs would get me to come running. Then throwing toys became his way of saying "come and carry me down the stairs".

Our toddler DS figured out fast that if he hurt the baby I would come and take the baby away. So much for the "comfort the victim" first approach.

For stuff relating to an understanding of time, I think that comes a lot later. Our 2.5 year old doesn't really get those connections yet and I don't think that's strange. Our oldest definitely understood a lot of "x now produces y later" type stuff by the time she was two, but she was precocious as a baby and toddler.

Sometimes I think that toddlers understand stuff, but they're too busy getting angry to problem solve. Why get up and move your chair when you can just get mad about the fact that it's not where you want it.

[colsxjack]

Our 15 month old definitely recognizes some consequences. He let her climb on things because really, we can't stop her. But then we have a rule that she sits down or gets down. We ask her to sit on her bum. She ignores us. We say "sit on your bum or get down" she ignores us. But as soon as we start walking over to get her down she smiles and sits on her bum.

Other than that we do not give her a lot of consequences. But she understands a lot of things so I think she would basically understand anything we tell her repeatedly.