I’ve only been a mom for just over two years, but as every parent knows: Parenting is hard. I sometimes get overwhelmed thinking about how much I don’t know about parenting, or how to handle Situation X and Issue Y. I freeze sometimes, thinking about how to and how not to approach a problem and then the moment passes and I hope I didn’t do it wrong…I not only want to not do it wrong, I want to do parenting The Most Right. I’m sure I’m not alone.
Maggie is the best kid in a billion ways, and one of them is how gracious she is in helping me learn to parent her as we grow. She is big-hearted and patient and good at communicating what she wants and a happy, contented child. I want to honor who she is as a person and respect her as I would any other human, even though she’s just a tiny one right now.
One way I want to honor and respect her as a person is by welcoming the things she teaches me. Detailing all the ways she’s taught me about myself and helped me grow could fill a book, so I’m sticking with lessons she’s teaching me about how her little life is working right now as a toddler.
So here are a few lessons I’ve learned in my brief time parenting a toddler so far.
1. Toddlers are agents of constructive destruction.
Every toddler I’ve ever encountered loves to make a mess. Empty the bin. Knock down the blocks. Throw the noodles. They walk out of a room riding a wave of destruction–toys strewn hither and yon. I can see it on their faces every time: Destruction is fun! Right now there are crayoned comets streaking my walls and toy food from Maggie’s play kitchen dumped in a heap by feet and a little Stonehenge of stacked books by the bookcase. I’ve always been a neat freak, and I still like my space clear–I really identify with Gretchen Rubin’s maxim: “Outer order contributes to inner calm.” But I have a shockingly high tolerance for Maggie’s messes–because I know it’s constructive destruction.
Maggie dumps out toys because she likes to watch the cascade. She likes to hear the tumble. She raises her eyebrows and pulls her mouth into a little O. She loves to shuffle through a pile of toys like they’re a pile of leaves. Even tearing a page in her book holds delight in the sound of ripping paper, the tug of resistance as it tears, the lesson that once it’s torn it is changed forever. But she’s building something by destroying something. It’s constructive–there’s value in what she’s doing. She’s learning and enacting the law of entropy: things naturally go from order to chaos.
Toddlers aren’t watching the world burn, they’re watching the world work.
2. Toddlers don’t misbehave.
Their behavior simply reflects their developmental capabilities. They’re wired to test limits and learn to interact with the world and parents and peers and objects. Everything is new and exciting and very, very interesting to them. Just about every second of the day, toddlers are exploring. Even when they do something we find problematic, they’re learning cause and effect. The “MIS” of misbehave is really just saying they’re doing something we don’t want them to do. We’re interpreting their behavior as “bad.”
But what about when they bite? Hit? Take a toy right out of another kid’s hands? Pull the dog’s tail? Scream in my face? I hear you. Those are indeed behaviors we want to curb. But I’ve found that it’s best if I start from a place of openness, recognizing that she isn’t taking that toy out of her cousin’s hands with the knowledge that it’s wrong and she’s going to do it anyway. She’s taking the toy because wow, it looks really cool. He’s not biting because he knows it hurts you and he wants to hurt you. He’s biting because he’s frustrated and it’s very enticing to feel powerful–even if it’s the power of his jaws clamping down. She’s not pulling the dog’s tail because she knows the dog hates it. She’s pulling the dog’s tail because the dog always jumps when she pulls the tail and it’s kind of funny. It helps if I try to slow down and think about where they’re coming from rather than focusing on telling them why they’re doing something I don’t want them to do. It helps if I don’t think “bad.”
3. My toddler isn’t mad at me, she’s just mad.
Like every parent and child, there are times when both of us can’t get what we want at the same time. I sometimes don’t allow Maggie to do certain things or tell her “later” when she wants “now” or misunderstand something she wants or or or or. All the tiny moments that lead to what we call “meltdowns.”
The other day I did something that angered her so she ran away screaming. I assumed that because I was the force standing between something she wanted to have happen and what was happening instead, she was mad at me and figured she could use a little space and a break away from me. Which is an assumption I’ve made many times. Her bursts are usually very short-lived, so she’s not screaming in the other room for twenty minutes by herself or anything. But this time I held out my arms and she ran into them. She wanted to scream and be close to me.
I realized that it was my assumption that she’s mad at me, when it’s probably more accurate that she’s frustrated at being thwarted–which is not necessarily tied to me. Now whenever she yells or cries, I hold out my arms. Almost always she will run into my arms to be held while she hollers out her big emotions. Both of us feel better about her tough moments now because both of us feel safe riding it out within a hug.
4. Toddlers lack context.
I once saw a video someone took of their pre-lingual kid in tears, shaken up over a scene in Finding Nemo. I think a lot of people see something like that and think it’s really cute, but it made me really sad and uncomfortable. That tiny kid has only had so many months on Earth (I don’t even think she was 2 yet)–there is so much information about the world that she hasn’t experienced yet. I remember when Maggie was really little and would occasionally wake up screaming from what we assumed was a bad dream because her physical needs were met. I asked James what a tiny baby could have bad dreams about and he said, “Probably just being left alone.” My heart broke a little thinking about what it would feel like to lack such important life context that Mom and Dad would be back–or that Nemo would be rescued by the end of the movie.
We build massive structures of context over the course of our lives that help us understand the relationships between events, between people, and even between time. We know how the world works on a physical level; we know what is safe and what isn’t, we know what will hurt and what won’t and why. We know about distance, that some destinations just take longer to reach than others.
We know how stories work: easy life –> problem –> solution –> better life. But what if you didn’t know that? What if you didn’t know that there is a solution, a better life, safety coming after the scare, the fear, the danger? I could talk for days about the importance of stories and how they’re a roadmap for living and building empathy, and are ultimately a safe space to explore problems. And I will always, always advocate for reading challenging books. But I wouldn’t read Les Miserables to Maggie as a two-year-old and expect her to see any meaning beyond pain.
Even simple things like idioms. “Fall asleep” sounds pretty precarious and rather UNrestful. I just try to remember that Maggie is still learning, that she does not have the context yet. Many things that aren’t scary or confusing or frustrating to me are so because I know how they work or how they resolve. I mean, Maggie doesn’t even have the context to understand why putting her finger up her nose isn’t socially acceptable. She has almost zero social context. Sometimes I think about the vast web of experience she doesn’t have yet and it helps me slow down and not expect her to know why karate is okay but hitting your mom is not.
5. Toddlers are excellent role models.
This girl knows what she wants and she says it. She knows what she feels and she shows it. She runs when she feels like running, she eats until she’s full regardless of how much is left on her plate, she asks for help and asks for independence, and she gives full-hearted hugs. She expresses everything. She takes her time with things she thinks are important (stacking books just so), she slows down, crouches down, hunkers down to examine something cool in the grass. She takes time for herself when she wants it (she reads to herself in her room endlessly). She cries when she needs to and finds someone to hug when she wants to. She savors. She feels her body moving through the world and feels the world with fingers and toes. She says no. She appreciates rest and a good night’s sleep, she loves friends and family, she pays attention. She tries new things and doesn’t care about expected outcomes. She returns again and again to things that please her. She laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.
Some caveats
Obviously, my kid is only barely 2. And so far I only have the one kid. My philosophy and perspectives are bound to become more nuanced and informed with more experience on my part, with more kids and their different needs and personalities, and also as Maggie grows and goes through different phases and ages that call for a different approach.
Right now I’m learning about the parenting style Magda Gerber called RIE or Resources for Infant Educarers. I listen to Janet Lansbury’s podcast, Unruffled, and I’ve read her book Elevating Childcare and have just started No Bad Kids. I’m interested in the gentle parenting approach and intend to keep reading and learning, so if you have other gentle parenting books, podcasts, blogs, etc. to recommend, please do send them my way!
Maggie is the best. Kids are the best.
Satisdiction 