Please help me brainstorm ways to occupy my 21-month-old and give him enough intellectually stimulation that he is happy/satisfied/not throwing temper tantrums. I'm not finding much on google searches for under preschool age.

My son likes to identify flashcards pictures of animals, but he has learned all he has and the novelty has worn off. Forget "frog" and "toad", try "American Toad" versus "Natterjack Toad". He loved learning these!

I started teaching him violin this week. This is going to be a rough ride for me. He doesn't tolerate nearly as much repetition as is expected for Suzuki style teaching but he's not ready to progress. This is my mental puzzle, but as far as occupying him, it's 2 or 3 minutes at a time, as many times a day as he asks for it.

I started showing him piano keyboard. He points to music with a quizzical expression. He's so young, I'm at a loss! I'm familiar with Suzuki piano (my mother was a Suzuki teacher), but this is brand new territory. My mother would not have helpful advice. I asked her about violin and she told me to get a cardboard violin and set it on his shoulder. My son learned how to put the violin on his shoulder by himself and put it in rest position from watching a DVD.

He helps me a little bit with chores - washing the patio door glass, loading the dishwasher, sorting socks, and he folds washcloths (ehh, good enough, LOL).

We go outside for a walk when it's not terribly cold. We're in WI so winter is a very cooped-up time of year. I do yoga and bodyweight exercises at home - he tries to copy me sometimes. He can play outside and tag along with gardening etc in summer.

He has little interest in toddler toys. He doesn't like kids his age. He hated daycare. I did observe from daycare that he seems to like imaginative play along the lines of "playing house". He liked a baby doll toy, although the novelty has worn off. He likes a lacing toy. He likes to throw a ball for the dog to retrieve. He likes to scribble (supervised because he's a kid who will color on the walls!)

If I can squeeze everything above into the morning, we have a lovely morning without tantrums and he's happy to take his nap(s), but by afternoon it's not novel and he doesn't want to participate. If I don't give him enough to do with his brain, he screams for books, throws things (hard), hits or kicks the dogs, throws himself on the floor screaming, puts himself into a time out (thanks daycare :sarcasm: ), he doesn't eat well, begs for junk food, and fights sleep. It's exhausting.

Can you help me with a few more activities ideas I can mix in to avoid the boredom tantrums?

Adding - My other son is 9, homeschooled and plays 2 instruments. There's always music going on here! DS9 watches Great Courses, and DS1 is happy to be in the TV / play room during that time. I have time to figure out activities for DS1 this coming week because we're picking up 4 Great Courses series from the library tomorrow. That's what, 50 hours of lecture video?! Woot!!

Search pinterest with "toddler" and "activities". More for imaginative play than anything else. My older twin who was obsessed with cleaning during the toddler years would do things like flush cookie monster in the toilet to when I wasn't looking. I get it... cookie monster was dirty and needed a bath, but oh my goodness he was difficult to keep up with. A tub of diaper ointment was good enough to be finger paint. I wish I would have had some of these creative ideas when DS was younger.

Library visits, board books, magnadoodle, building with duplos, dry erase markers on the windows, anything with water, sorting colors of tiles in buckets.

FWIW, neither intellectual stimulation nor physical activity prevented tantrums here. The only thing that helped was time.

The best thing I did for my littles was to scoop up 2/3 of their toys and put them in the closet in two "sets". Every so often I exchanged the toys that were out with a set of toys in the closet. They were always very happy to play on the days I changed out the toys.

Do you talk to him about everything going on? Think of a sports announcer during the game, describing each play and then analyzing it when time allows. Kids can pick up a lot of vocabulary, grammar, and speech patterns this way. They can develop observational skills and understanding of their everyday environment.

Reading to your child also has benefits. It sounds as though your child likes books!

Hart & Risley did research in the 1960's which showed gains for children (see info here and here) whose parents read to them and engaged them in meaningful dialog.

Some parents like to teach their infants sign language.

Sometimes offering choices can help diffuse frustration -
- Would you like to wear red socks or blue socks?
- Would you like to eat mashed banana or banana slices?
- Would you like me to read this book or that book to you?

For some children, a rocking chair, hammock, or small swing can be a comforting spot to retreat to and self-soothe.

I'm adding a link to a thread with resources for Enriched Home Learning Environments.

DS was speech delayed and a rather intense little guy at that age. His inability to communicate just added to the fun because we usually couldn't figure out what it was that he was so ticked off about.

Some of the things that we picked up in speech therapy really helped us.
1. we came to realize that even though he couldn't communicate with us, he clearly understood everything that we were saying. His speech therapist was completely blown away by his comprehension (she was the first outsider that gave us hints that he was gifted).

2. choice - as indigo mentioned above choice was very helpful at diffusing things. We went out of our way to give him as much control as possible on the things that we could which ended up helping in the situations where we couldn't. It started as a way to encourage him to talk with us but ended up being more. We would offer 2 options for snacks, 2 options for clothes, 2 options for chores and he'd have to make an effort at vocalizing a response. In the end it helped me realize that giving him some feelings of control/autonomy were key to him and it helped when we got to the situations where I did have to lay down the hammer - you have to hold my hand in the parking lot for example.

3. communication - when we started speech therapy they started with 2 signs always accompanied by the word(s) and done near our mouth to emphasize the speech part - more and all done which really helped. Both were then used for books, toys, playing, food, drinks, etc.

Not sure if your pre-talking description matches our no-talking experience at that age but if you want more details about our speech therapy fun, I'm more than happy to share.

There is a great series of videos for teaching sign language to kids called "Signing Time". Each video introduces about 10-20 words through cartoons, catchy songs and videos of real kids. Our library carried most of the videos, but I think you can even stream them from amazon now. (https://www.amazon.com/Signing-Time-First-Signs-DVD/dp/B000R3441G)

Our family probably learned at least a hundred signs by the time our daughter started talking. She enjoyed watching the videos, of course, but her increased ability to communicate was wonderful and significantly reduced her frustration. She was even able to put signs together into sentences so she could communicate things like: "More milk." or "Where is daddy?"

Since around 18 months, DD loved puzzles. There was one where she had to make 3-letter and 4-letter words where each alphabet was a piece of the jigsaw and had a part of the picture. (I'll try to recall the toy's name). For instance - FOX is made of three pieces F-O-X and when put together also made a picture of a fox. Soon, DD was also able to pick one piece and could tell which animal or object's name that piece belonged to.

Also, around the same time, we had got a toddler-friendly wall map of United States and taught her the states. At 22 months she could identify about 15 states and enjoyed us calling out "Wyoming" and she doing a Hi-Five like action tapping over the state on the map.

building toys may help, those are more free form (magna tiles are extremely popular here, even for older kids, and I have seen them in the 3s room in the daycare our kids went to all the up to K/1st grade - we have a huge stack that we got when our oldest was 3 and even though he is 6, he still loves to play with them). IO blocks may be interesting too if he is not prone to get mouthy with stuff. DH has gotten butcher paper to scribble at dinner table and huge brown roll for DD to go crazy with art.

I know it can be hard with an older child around, but it sounds like maybe he could use a bit more time out of the house. I know my own toddler gets a little nutty if she's cooped up inside for days on end and we also live in a cold climate so it's not as easy as running around in the backyard everyday. I'd look for active things like a toddler gymnastics class or an indoor trampoline place, or even things like a weekly library trip (perhaps during story time) or a music class geared towards toddlers. Or what about swimming, is there an indoor pool around? Many of these activities don't last too long so your older child could bring something to work on while the toddler works out some energy.

Wow! Thank you for so many ideas! He does have some words but he doesn't really use them. He's ahead of normal development, but DS9 was SO VERBAL at this age, DS1 *feels* behind. It's weird.

I especially like the map idea. We get maps from Nat Geo in most issues. I usually toss them, but I can hang them low for toddler entertainment!

I will have to figure out puzzles. He is spoiled by ipad puzzle apps where the pieces magically pop into place. whoops! He seems to like fiddly little things. I will look around for puzzles I can make or buy.

@notnafnaf thanks for magnatiles suggestion. I looked at them at Christmas, they looked interesting.

@Portia thanks for the Montessori suggestion! I will look there!

@indigo I love your "sportscaster" suggestion! That would keep him occupied and brain-busy while I do ordinary things. 'cause lordy knows that dishes and laundry don't come to a stand-still just because a kid wants/needs attention! Thank you also for the suggestion to make a self-soothing place! It's so sad when he runs to a corner mid-meltdown. Corners aren't very comforting places! While brainstorming this I remembered a mini pop up tent we used to keep him in the shade last summer. I don't have a way to make a swing or rocker, but I can make a cave <3

Thank you for all the ideas, even those I didn't respond to directly. I appreciate the help from all your been-there-done-that experience! DS9 was intense in a quiet, focused, and easy sort of way. I was not prepared for this!