On dawdling toddlers

I walked out of my house the other day and heard my neighbor two buildings down yell at her three year old son, “I said get up into your car seat!” Obviously, the child was not listening well, and obviously, his mother was in quite a hurry. Her tone communicated well her rushed exasperation which bordered on anger. Initially, I was inclined to send a subtle non-verbal signal to my wife, consisting of raised eyebrows and pursed lips, communicating something like a judgmental jab at the woman’s parenting skills and general demeanor toward her child. But before I had a chance, my conscience caught me, reminding me of the many times we correct our own daughter for “dawdling”. What this often means is that we’re running late because of some fault (genetic perhaps) of our own, and so we rush her along to get dressed, eat breakfast, brush her teeth at speeds akin to the auditory effusion of an auctioneer. I was particularly convicted of this around the same week that I overheard my neighbor’s annoyance. We hurried our daughter along one morning with admonitions such as “don’t dawdle” when the most poignant words came from her mouth, “but I was looking at the flowers”. Immediately, the expression, stop and smell the roses came to mind, and I realized that at times we force her out of the comfort of her carefree frolic and into the cast that contains our own worries and headaches and hardships, into the mold that we ourselves have often succombed to -- that of our ever scrambling society. It wasn’t the first time (and I know it won’t be the last), but I learned a valuable lesson from my 4 year old daughter that day.