From the Desk of Dad: Toddler Nature



 I still remember the moment that Charlie discovered violence as an engine for enforcing her little Toddler will. She was right around 1-1/2. She had never witnessed violence, or even adult voices raised in anger (Emma's intimidating physical presence cowed me long before Char arrived on scene). She had been on a spree of increasing resistance to diaper changes, getting PJs on, and the like. She understood physical struggle, and that in the course of struggle that her pushes and kicks could cause us discomfort or cause us to pause. She must have been coming to the realization that she caused us pain in the process.

We were sitting on the floor. She had my phone and was toying about with it and I decided that it was not time to be playing with phones anymore. I removed it from her possession and put it in my pocket. She tried to get it for a moment, pushed and tugged at me, then turned her back on me for a moment to make some angry toddler noises, banging her fist down against her leg.


Then something magical happened.


She held her fist that had been striking her leg aloft, and then she looked up at it, like we were living in some over-aware Kubrick film. And then she turned to me, fist raised, with the light of discovery and malice in her little eyes as she advanced on me.


Charlie had invented violence.


Her blow landed. I scooped her up in my arms and folded her indignant little person in my lap and tried so hard not to burst out laughing. If I am honest. I tried hard not to burst with pride. My little angel had figured out physical coercion--violence, and the threat of violence--all by herself at such a young age. How advanced.

Additional toddlers have taught me that they have a hundred little ways to creatively and intuitively act on their most selfish and asocial impulses. There is a school of thought that children are such perfect blank slates that we need to protect from corruption and nurture in their inward purity. What I saw that day, and in the days since--there were plenty of times today--is a little Idi Amin who needs firm boundaries, set with whatever gentleness can be wrung from already tired and deeply imperfect parent. She needs moral instruction, direction, correction, and love--but love is not a sentiment, but all the antecedents that came in front.


I would love to say more, get some twin facts in, but I just heard her wake up crying for some inscrutable reason, so I guess this is enough for now.


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