About — Toddler Topics

I'm Camille Ortega. Before I had children, I spent eleven years teaching in toddler and preschool classrooms — which means that by the time my own two arrived (they're now three and five), I had already survived roughly four hundred eighteen-month-olds. It also means I know exactly how it feels when a parent grabs your sleeve at pickup and asks, "is this normal?"

The answer, almost always, is yes — and Toddler Topics exists to show you why. This site is a reference book for ages one to three: not a scrapbook, not a feed, but an organized set of entries you can look up at 2am. What a sleep regression actually is and what to do about the 18-month one. Why a two-year-old melts down over the blue cup. How many words is "enough" at twenty months. What a realistic day looks like at two. Every entry tells you three things: what's happening, why it's developmentally normal (when it is), and what to actually do next.

Here's the table of contents: Sleep for regressions, nap transitions and bedtime battles, Behavior & Tantrums for the hitting-biting-flopping repertoire, Development & Speech for milestones and language, Schedules by Age for a template day at every age, and Eating for the picky phase in all its glory.

One important note, stated plainly: I'm an educator, not a doctor. Nothing on this site is medical advice, and no article can see your child. When an entry touches anything health-adjacent — speech delays, growth, sleep problems that don't resolve — I'll say what's commonly within the normal range and then tell you to bring it to your pediatrician, because that's genuinely what I'd do. A well-organized question is the most useful thing a parent can carry into that appointment, and that's what these entries are for.

What you won't find here: judgment about your parenting choices, miracle methods, invented statistics, or panic. The toddler years are loud enough already. This is the quiet shelf where you look things up.

A note on affiliate links: some posts contain affiliate links — if you buy through one, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things that earn their place in a house with toddlers in it.