Lessons From a Toddler

Every age and stage in a child's life brings with it both joy and struggle.

Infants are completely dependent on the adults in their lives, and demand lots of attention (they seem to particularly like attention between the hours of 2 and 4AM). But they are sweet and snuggly and they have that perfect baby smell (and they don't talk back!).

Teenagers are starting to develop into the adults they will one day become, and are trying out their growing independence. But those wacky hormones make for argumentative, moody kids. Hormones must also increase IQ, cause I haven't met many teenagers who don't know EVERYTHING... or at least more than their parents.

I think my favorite age though, is the range between 18 months and 3 years... toddlerhood. I know, crazy right? This age gets kind of a bad rap. Tantrums and the terrible twos and all that nonsense. But you will never see a person who is filled with more wonder and curiosity about the world around them than a toddler. The most ordinary, everyday things will illicit awe in a toddler.

We make the 40 mile drive to Steamboat Springs a few times a month for a movie, an appointment, or to pick up something we can't find here in town. If you were to ask our four older children if they enjoy the drive, they would probably look at you like you'd lost your mind. To them, it's boring. They've seen it all before... dozens of times. But to Quinn, it's always new and exciting. There are so many everyday things along the way that he finds completely fascinating... cows, trains, horses, rivers, trucks, airplanes.

I love his sense of wonder about the world around him. I love how excited he is each day to learn new things. Why do we lose that? WHEN do we lose that? It seems like there is a period in childhood where it becomes commonplace to take life for granted. Then... somewhere in adulthood we get some of the wonder back. Maybe adults are better able to see the beauty in life because they have more experience with some of the ugliness and pain as well.

That drive to Steamboat that my older children find so boring and mundane... I know that at their ages, I would have felt similarly. But now that I am older (and hopefully a little wiser), I am able to find some wonder in the things I see along the way... the colorful foliage, the clear blue sky, an elk spied on the hillside. I can't say that I get quite as excited as Quinn about the plane in the sky, but it does help me to remember that we live in an amazing world and I should spend a little more time being AMAZED by it. There is one thing that never ceases to amaze me... my toddler.