A humbling truth about parenting toddlers is that they learn from absolutely everything you do.
I typically only think about teaching my 22-month-old daughter Senita when I do something proactive like count and stack building blocks into a tower that she delights in knocking over.
For extra fun I put one of her farm-animal figurines on top and declare it ruler of the world.
As we near the precipice of the “terrible twos,” however, I wonder if introducing the concept of tyranny was the right move.
Every morning my daughter and I have a routine. After fifteen minutes of me trying to find the snooze button (turns out baby monitors don’t come with one) I get her up by turning off the sound machine, turning on the lights, opening the curtains, and exclaiming “Hello world!”
Senita participates enthusiastically in this routine narrating the sequence as I do it: “noise, lights, curtains, and so on. At least that’s what I assumed.
Last weekend I learned that when my wife Jenny goes in for the morning routine she feels a bit bossed around. If you walk past the white noise machine to turn on the lights first, it isn’t always greeted with the same level of participatory enthusiasm.
Which might mean that Senita doesn’t think she’s rooting me on as I assumed, but rather that she thinks she’s sitting atop a block throne conducting the routine from between her crib slats.
That distinction, if true, drastically alters our relationship by introducing an adversarial aspect I’m not yet ready to face.
Toddler intimidation is its own troubling mix of sweetness, lack of filter and very powerful emotions without any sense of reason or remorse. Sure I can get her to say sorry but I’ve also met a parrot who could whistle the Gilligan’s Island theme song so it doesn’t count for much.
I’ve had a few glimpses into what it might look like if my daughter ends up breaking bad. One of her favorite toys right now is a winged piggy bank (to be spent “when pigs fly”) she’s named Money.
One morning Senita awoke wanting to play with Money but though she could easily see Money, she could not reach Money because of the aforementioned crib. I was still sleeping so she kept calling out “Money, Money.”
There’s no way to wake up to someone demanding money 150 times in a row without it sounding like a threat. The lack of vocal modulation was especially unsettling.
Happily the affection she showed for Money upon being reunited melted any apprehensions I had for the moment. She is, after all, a toddler.
It’s hard to be offended by someone scolding you when yesterday they spent five minutes begging for a Graham cracker while holding a Graham cracker.
Nevertheless, I’m already learning to choose my battles.
Senita loves music but recently figured out I can skip songs so now insists on veto power over songs. That’s fine since it’s only when I’m playing songs to entertain her.
The difference between Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells is arbitrary. But soon she’ll start connecting some dots and trying to control what we listen to in the car and I can’t allow that.
Still, it’s easier to decide which conflicts to avoid than which errors to insist on fixing.
Errors creep into a toddler’s vocabulary in the strangest places. For Senita she calls the thing we decorate with ornaments a Christmas “treat,” anything oval shaped is “Humpty Dumpty,” and all elephants are called “Harrison.” That one takes some explaining that isn’t worth the payoff but it makes sense to her.
Then there’s my fear that overcorrection could create an obsessive association. This happened to us with “hot dog hands,” the term I lovingly warned her against when she refused to use a fork and got grease all over the hands she ate with.
While I got her to meticulously keep her “hot dog hands” clean with a napkin, she’s taken it to the next level and now warns against “muffin hands” and even “pretzel hands,” which definitely isn’t a thing.
Yes, I didn’t want Senita getting hot dog grease all over the couch or her clothes but I also don’t want the kind of kid who’s scared to eat a pretzel stick without a napkin.
Whether it’s a concept, new word, table manner, or basic hygiene, figuring out how to communicate it to a toddler is all guesswork for me. I’ve tuned into some of the experts, and it’s all guesswork for them too. So I’m just trying my best.
Soon enough Senita will be smart enough to figure out that I have no idea what I’m doing and this will all come crashing down on me like a pig-shaped toy sitting atop a building-block tower. That’s when I’ll know I taught her right.
If you enjoy my humor writing, please subscribe below.
If you want to syndicate this column, you may contact me here to discuss the details.
You may notice that I’ve disabled commenting on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts by email at [email protected].