This guitar has a very short scale which means that in order to be able to play it in standard guitar tuning you would need to either fret very gently or use heavier guage strings (such as 0.11 or heavier). Alternatively you can tune up the guitar a fourth (i.e. A D G B E A instead of the standard E A G D B E). For kids under 3 that would just 'strum' on the guitar an open G Chord tuning (G D G B D G) may be a good idea.