There you are… in the middle of your favorite store, the place you once felt so much happiness. Right now, you are currently letting your toddler throw a fit about something completely ridiculous and completely out of your control. People around you are staring… yet you continue to shop for what you came for and tell your toddler to “please relax” as you move about the aisles.
In this moment you will realize, that you are a person you swore you would never be.
Toddlers, are very similar to your drunk friends in college. While you will promise to always and forever take care of them, there will be times when they are uncontrollable and you have to let them suffer while just making sure they survive. There will be times where, like your drunk friends, they are annoying, but you still love them more than anything. There will also be times, where people around you will stare, and you will just let them live their best life (even if their “best life” is screaming and crying).
I remember around the time my daughter turned one, people would say “just wait until she is a toddler” and would complain about these crazy things their toddlers did. I would think to myself, “no, my child is an angel. I can handle it”. Or “Charlotte would NEVER do that, I will teach her to know better”.
Yet, one day I realized THIS was the moment they were talking about. This was “You’ll know it when it happens“. Toddlers are the age in between understanding right from wrong. The age when they are big enough, strong enough, and smart enough to tear apart everything you own because they are curious. The age were they start testing your limits and seeing if you really mean NO when you say it. They are adventurous little creatures who like to color, and also like your walls- so to them why not color on the walls?
Toddlers will make you do things you swore you never would. We’ve all judged another parent at some point in our lives, whether it was before we had kids or after. Yet, when we reach the toddler age we end up doing a few of those things we scoffed at when were younger.
Let me conclude by saying, I LOVE MY DAUGHTER more than anything in the world. Don’t judge a parent with a screaming child, you’ve either been there and forgotten what it was like. Or you will be there soon, because you’ll know it when it happens.
