Isn’t Childrearing Essentially Taming the Wild Creatures?

Sometimes I can’t help but notice how feral toddlers can be. They see literally no boundaries, they have absolutely no fear and they certainly cannot anticipate consequences.

What they need, at the beginning of their mobile lives, is taming.

No, you can’t climb on all of the furniture. No, you can’t tug on lamps. No, you can’t push all the buttons that you know control the entertainment like the tv remote and the cell phone. No, you can’t climb up and down the stairs by yourself cuz there’s that thing called gravity. No, you can’t throw food on the floor and no, you cannot have access to any of the cupboards.

And a BIG no to the refrigerator which you once opened, then yanked the syrup off a shelf and carried it across the floor with the top loosened, creating a trail of stickiness that actually smell great but seriously.

Our brains can’t even anticipate some of your mischief. It’s quite remarkable and dare I say even impressive. When you move through the world without language that would enable having a conversation about your intentions, you just forge ahead! The world is yours to discover and potentially demolish!

But your fate, of course, lies in the hands of your captors which is what you have transformed your parents into which is never what they thought would happen. They intended to be your benevolent providers and they are, but equally as regularly, they need to save you from yourself. They need to preserve your life.

From the grandparenting perspective, it’s all kinda funny. My son had been my son for 30 years, then he turned into a parent and he must deliver on that role. So I used to be the only one doing any parenting, but now we are both parenting! What a level playing field! What a pleasure to have this in common!

I find that one incredibly fulfilling byproduct of the taming of the child relates to the necessity of holding a toddler’s hand to guide some of the safety. And I LOVE holding a little hand. I treasured holding my sons’ little hands when they were young, which gave rise to me frequently asking them, rhetorically, “What’s am I holding, what is this?” And I answered, “My very favorite hand!” I’m sure they tired of hearing it.

Now I hold GrandGirl #1’s hand when we’re going up and down steps and when we walk on unstable surfaces outside and when we stroll down the cul-de-sac street she lives on.

If hand holding is one of the best and most foolproof approaches to civilizing the little ones, I’ll definitely take more of that! Their wildness can always find a soft resting place right there in the palm of my hand.