Crib Notes: 6 Lessons Toddlers Can Teach the Rest of Us

A toddler's face says it all. Biba Kayewich

Surely the most eager students in the world are kids from 1 to 3 years of age.

Every waking moment, they’re absorbing the world around them. They’re learning to walk and talk, they’re learning to eat by themselves, they sing or try to sing, some even dress themselves. By the time toddlers become preschoolers, they’ve picked up more information than half-a-dozen Ph.D. candidates.

Just watch some 30-month-old kid wandering around the living room tipsy as a drunkard, belly hanging over his diaper, bits of food clinging to his lips and cheeks, hands sticky as lollipops. He may be a bit unsteady on his feet, but he’s into everything, from the trash can to the kitty litter box. Put on some music, and he’s holding onto the coffee table and bouncing up and down. Take that wiggly bundle of energy to church, and you’ll end up the service feeling as if you’ve just spent an hour at the gym. He’s the reason you collapse exhausted into bed by 9 p.m., but enroll him in daycare and your heart breaks the first time you leave him alone.

He’s a handful, but if we look at him in the right way, that little nipper is actually a professor who has some profound lessons for the rest of us.

Life Is an Adventure

Unless you plop the kid on the sofa in front of the television, the words “I’m bored” are not in the toddler’s vocabulary. There’s a whole world to figure out, and every day brings new experiences. Take the kid to the back yard, for instance, and he becomes an explorer in the middle of a veldt, bending over to study ants on the walkway, pulling up a daisy and sniffing it, and pausing to listen to the catbirds in the shrubs.

The toddler’s senses are antennae open to every sensation. Consequently, his waking days are a series of adventures comparable to the voyages of Ulysses or the treks of Daniel Boone. We older folk might take a lesson from him and see our own days as adventures rather than ordeals to be endured.

Failure Leads to Success

The toddler grows through failure. She falls dozens of times while acquiring the ability to stand upright and stagger around. She learns verbal communication, advancing from gobbledygook to single words and then short sentences. After months of messes, she obtains the skills necessary to guide a spoon into her mouth. With Mom and Dad’s help, she comes to appreciate the wonders of a toilet and leaves the diapers behind.

When life throws a punch and knocks us for a loop, it might help to remember the toddlers we once were, grab hold of that coffee table, and stand up again.

Sometimes You’ve Gotta Be a Gadfly

Toddlers embarrass us when they throw tantrums. Even more embarrassing are adults who throw tantrums. No one wants to be around some vein-popping 40-year-old maniac publicly venting his rage with curses and imprecations.

Many times, however, when toddlers are fussy or even going full-tilt boogie, all red-faced and howling at the top of their lungs, it’s because they’re frustrated. Something’s annoying them, or they’re hungry or uncomfortable, and that shout-out is their only form of communication.

Like them, we adults must sometimes raise our voices to get others to listen. Here, the government may come to mind. When public officials are deaf to the complaints of their constituents or pay them no heed, an uproar can follow in the wake of that indifference. Indeed, revolutions arise from that frustration.

When my own children were small, my wife would sometimes have them listen to a Safety Kids tape. One of these songs had to do with stranger danger, but the words apply to all of us today:

Sometimes you just gotta yell and scream,

Sometimes it’s the only thing to do,

Noisy as a fire truck you just gotta open up

And get the crowd’s attention turned to you. Toddlers do that. And sometimes we need to do it, too.

Independence Is Important

There are many online articles suggesting ways to create independence in little ones, but few toddlers I’ve known need encouragement in that department. They want to feed themselves, soon they want to pick out their own clothes, often outfitting themselves like miniature clowns, and once they’ve added running to their repertoire, they have to be kept under close watch crossing the street or visiting Grandma’s antique-filled living room.

Toddlers teach us that wanting to make our own decisions and doing things for ourselves is a vital part of the human spirit. After all, the main thrust of growing a child into an adult is a series of lessons teaching them independence. When some exterior agency attempts to place unreasonable checks on our liberties and our desires to choose our own way, toddlers should serve as our reminder that the desire for liberty is deeply rooted within us.

But Everybody Needs a Mommy

The 2-year-old falls and scrapes her knee on the sidewalk, and comes running in tears to Mom. The normally loud and rambunctious 3-year-old sits beside Mom on the sofa while she reads to him, looking as peaceful as some cherub in a Renaissance painting. When a stranger approaches mother and child in a store or on a sidewalk, the toddler clings just a little tighter to Mom. Sally the cat is hit by a car, and the little one turns to Mom for an explanation of death.

I don’t mean to exclude dads here, but let’s face it, Moms hold a special place in the affections of toddlers. She carried the baby for nine months, which alone might explain that connection.

But here’s the point: Toddlers teach us that we all need people in our lives who provide that same sense of security and love bestowed by Mom when we were little. Whether it’s a brother, sister, or some other family member, or a best friend, when we’re in a storm, we need the safe haven their love and understanding can provide.

Let’s Conclude With the Lesson of Laughter

If we as parents and grandparents can keep our wits about us, toddlers bring laughter in the wake of the disasters they sometimes cause. The amusement may be delayed when the kid takes a magic marker to the bathroom wall, but sooner or later, the chuckles come. In a world in need of laughter, the toddler is often the best comedian in the house.

In that spirit of fun, let’s end with three quips from parents about their toddlers:

“Nothing says we’re going to be 7 hours late like my toddler yelling, ‘Nooo! Don’t help me!’”

“Communicating with a toddler is difficult. It’s like trying to explain what color number 4 smells like.”

“A friend asked what parenting toddlers was like, so I hid her keys, headbutted her in the face, and then told her I loved her more than all the stars.”

If you have a toddler in your life, pay attention. Class is in session.

And watch out for those headbutts.