AD Kids Susan HenrichsMonopoly, checkers, Trivial Pursuit . . . not quite fodder for Baby's mind, right? But experts say there's a world of games and fun activities that you and your baby can do that helps him learn, helps the two of you bond and best of all: lets you have fun together. And you'll likely be surprised how much your baby is capable of doing.

Susan Henrichs

Make mealtimes pleasant. Avoid battles over disliked foods. Praise attempts at self-feeding. Set a good example with your own manners.

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AD Kids Company: Hardwiring Linda Acredolo, the co-author of Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 2000) and Baby Signs (McGraw Hill, 1996), says new parents often don't realize how much babies have going on "upstairs." "They're cute, but they don't look smart," she says. "Babies want to be challenged. They come into this world not just able to learn, but eager to learn."

In fact, babies are born with all the brain cells they'll ever have, says Tammy Morey, the creator of a combination infant development/postnatal fitness class for new moms called WeeFit. Your job is to "hardwire" their brain, helping those cells develop the circuits and connections that will help them learn throughout their life.

According to Morey, who is also the mother of two, all this "hardwiring" takes place in the first three years of life. "You only have such a short period with your child to make such a large impact in their life," she says.

Every time you smile at your baby, show him something new, sing a song or talk to him, neurons are firing messages between one another in his brain helping make those all-important connections. AD Kids Inc. AD Kids Inc AD Kids Information

Discriminating Palates: a.k.a 'Picky Eaters' Changes in eating habits at one year reflect not only changing bodily needs but also growing independence. Toddlers show definite likes and dislikes when it comes to food. This is a sign of their emerging individuality. Instead of pushing your child to eat a particular food, offer a variety of healthy foods and let your baby choose. In one well-known experiment, 1-year-old babies who were allowed to choose from a range of wholesome foods with no pressure from adults, selected what they required–and ate balanced diets over a month's time.

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About AD Kids: Perhaps the biggest hallmark of independence is learning to walk at around age 1, according to Alan Fogel, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. "Baby learns he can walk away from Mom and walk back when he wants to -- suddenly he is in control of his own destiny." But that's really just the very beginning. At around 18 months, your child reaches the "my way or the highway" stage: There are a number of tasks he can do, but not with any real skill, and your participation is probably not welcome.

So where does all this confidence come from? At this age, a large variety of skills start to come together. Your child's increasing vocabulary allows him to tell you what he wants. He's been walking long enough so that he feels surefooted; his small- and large-motor skills work together more smoothly; and he's handled enough tasks, such as making a block tower, that he feels pretty confident about mastering his environment.

That's great, but there are lots of things that your toddler can't do very well. He's not able to judge what kinds of tasks are too difficult for him to complete, and he certainly doesn't have enough control over his emotions to deal gracefully with obstacles to his independence. To compound all of this, he's less than thrilled when you try to help him along or secure his safety. (He doesn't yet understand that climbing up the front of the fridge could be disastrous.) So each day can bring a new victory -- or frustration -- as your child balances what he wants to do with what he can do. Every day is an internal battle for him over who's in charge: him or others.

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"If it was really bad, I would tell her to look at me in my eyes so we could focus on each other," says Cox. "That usually helped. I tried not to correct her or have a reaction because she was aware she was doing it, and it bothered her. She would get really frustrated and even embarrassed."

"The most important thing to me was to make sure other children were not making fun of her and that we didn't make a big deal out of it. Her cousins would ask why she was doing it, or they would laugh at her," says Cox. "Even though she was only 2, it would upset her tremendously when people laughed at her or noticed it."

AD KidsRob Sayer, director of The Music Class, says he started the company to get kids listening to music at an early age so that future musical instruction (the more formal kind) would come more easily. My kids are still too young for me to see whether this will pan out, but there is no question that those early classes -- which my 9-month-old son now enthusiastically attends -- have ignited a love for music in both of them that I never had at that age.

That Mozart CD we got in the hospital doesn't get much play in our house -- it's usually skipped in favor of our Music Class CDs -- but we've added dozens of other CDs to our collection. The best part of music class for us has been the great times it's fostered. And for that, I've realized, we didn't really need classes or even CDs; our own voices and pots and pans would have worked just fine, too.

Trehub agrees that having fun with your baby is one of music's greatest perks. But equally

important, she suggests, is its role as a cultural guidepost for children. Songs, both heard and sung, are a classic way for kids to learn about language, customs, and the larger world as a whole. Indeed, Weinberger has observed that many babies begin singing around the same time they start using language, and first words are often part of familiar songs.

"Even before literacy was widespread, crucial cultural information -- how to plant crops, the location of tribal boundaries -- was embedded in songs so it could be transmitted from one generation to the next," says Trehub. "Babies today learn animal names and sounds, counting, colors, stories, and, of course, the alphabet from the songs they hear and sing." My own children have picked up Spanish (their father's native language) from songs, and our friend Michael Schill of Philadelphia claims that his 2-year-old understands the contributions that snakes and spiders make to pest control, thanks to the endless playing of Mary Miche's Earthy Tunes album.

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Not-so-innocent Bystanders So how do you deal with strangers interfering when your child is acting up? For 45-year-old Mary Schnack of Sedona, Ariz., it was something she had to deal with regularly. Her daughter, now 19, is learning disabled and suffers from ADHD. She also has problems with impulse control and understanding cause and effect.

While Schnack says she never physically disciplined her child, she did have to be firm in public such as not letting go of her hand to keep her from wandering off. "I did get reactions from people that I was abusing my child," she says. "A store clerk asked me to either stop hurting my child or leave the store."

"At some level, parents have to be aware that concern by others might in fact be an issue," says Billingham. He suggests smiling at people and making a joke about the behavior by making comments like, "Only another 15 years of this!"

And keep in mind what matters most: your relationship with your child. "How the other people view you is so less important than how you interact with your child," says Polland.

"Most of us at some point in life have been either the toddler or the frustrated mom," says Douglas. "We just have to hope that we don't end up turning into the annoyed little old lady down the road, forgetting just how challenging it can be to be that young mother."

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