I’ve been spending some time lately with a young person, not quite two years old, usually in the company of one or both of his parents. Our own toddlers vanished long ago, slowly transformed on journeys of their own choosing into adults on the near and far side of thirty years of age. I barely remember the nuances of their toddler days.
A nearly-two-year-old doesn’t focus on lengthy discourses, so what you often have in their presence are nuances that move like a canoe along a gently sloping stream. What’s on this bank, the young canoeist asks, and tilts the paddle to investigate. And on that bank over there? a toddler ponders, turning the nose of the canoe once again. Those moments are as fragile as the scent of bulbs on spring morning air, and as far as our own children go, I have forgotten most of them. But this new young person reminds me.
I can tell that this particular toddler has been asking himself a lot of questions these days. Two of his questions surely are, “What is it that people do? And can I, as a person in good standing, do those same things myself?” The other day, we had a couple of bags of groceries to unload on the kitchen floor, and the youngster rummaged around to see what the bags contained. But those cans of seltzer water — when invited, he was happy to hand them to me one at a time for chilling in the fridge. But he was even happier, I think, when I urged him to load them directly, one by one, into the lowest level of the refrigerator door. Just like the big people do, setting bright can, bright can, bright can, by his own doing all in a tidy row.
On the playground I believe he watches folks his own age all the more keenly, checking for behavioral clues and for skills that he’d be eager to possess. He notices those just-a-little-older kids swarming and circling the climbing equipment, moving up and down fast at every opportunity. On a recent outing, he stood and watched this action for the briefest moment, formulating a great question for himself: “Why not me?” Shortly thereafter, on a gently sloping ramp, the question appeared to grow more specific. If I keep a hand on the railing, can I trot down this gently sloping ramp? The others are doing this kind of thing, why not me?
Having survived the first run down the gentle slope, he circled around and tried again, this time asking a more advanced question. Can I allow myself to let go of the railing halfway down the ramp? And the next time around, it was Can I allow myself to accept a bit of the speed offered by the inclined plane instead of resisting it? Judging by the his bright eyes, he found each new question at least as exciting as the last.
His loving, observant, busy parents are seeing these nuanced episodes by the cartload, but even with my small visitor’s sampling I can tell a lot about what he’s up to on the inside. He may not forever wear his hair in youthful ringlets, and his adventures won’t always be just a few feet away from the supervising family member. His adventures won’t always be visible to a casual observer—there will be some interior journeys. But let’s trust that the young person will try his best to ask himself good questions. Questions he’s posed for himself, skill-building questions asked in the freedom of the moment, prompted by the desires of his mysterious little heart.
"Wrong Foot Forward" by Flook
