Six Things Hanging Out with Toddlers Taught Me About Life

Upon my return to my ancestral homeland of Miami, I made a deliberate effort to spend time with friends that I now see all too infrequently. As is only natural with getting older, some of my friends have created little ones. 

Growing up, I did not spend time with little kids - absent when I was one. My exposure to babies and toddlers is an entirely new experience.

Over the last week, I spent at least four hours in the homes of boys aged two and eighteen months. I had a few insights from my time with them:

1) Three phases to life

 Much as we try to divide people up into various categories based on their work, nationality, political orientation, gender, color, and more – there are three fundamental epochs in our lives. These states of being bring with them such a dramatic shift in the structure of who we are, that we are forced to do something few people ever do independently:

 Change

 The first phase – single. This is the phase we all spend our young lives in. It works well – we are new to the world, and need to devote all our time and attention to making sense for ourselves. We may have other people in our lives, even one that is a committed romantic partner - but nothing tangible bind us. We are one for all, and all for one.

 The second phase – married. The romantic partner is no longer a commitment existing only in our own heads, it has real weight. Whether or not you subscribe to the to the religious encapsulation of what marriage is, the modern legal framework is not discretionary. Our lives become largely absorb into another. We are no longer entirely one – we become two.

 The third phase – children. In an ideal world, the third phase comes from the second (more on that in a later section). Marriage might have been a challenge, but that was a relationship with another adult. Two adults, similar in more ways than they aren’t. But a baby… a new human… that is an entirely different thing. The way we express our existence – action, emotion, thoughts – becomes effectively subservient to that of another living thing. There’s never been such a fragile, helpless creature dependent on us, and one that we love more than we knew was possible.

But we’d do well to remember – whether with our spouses or our children, we must maintain who we are. For it is who we are that brought us to them in the first place. 

2) Kids are little apes

I see kids as becoming what we understand to be a human being – not necessarily being born as one. All throughout history people have distinguished one another, the civilized and the barbarians.

Unquestionably there are many elements of human advancement that are positive – kindness, law, and democracy, to name a few. But we forget what we truly are, if you take away the clothes and jobs and walls. We share so much with our genetic cousins, the great apes. I can tell you from firsthand experience, that when I visited Uganda a few years ago and witnessed wild chimpanzees and mountain gorillas, there is an eerie connection.

Kids are born capable – capable of becoming whatever they’re molded into. Before that molding begins, they are much closer to apes than what we are as adults. They play, move, and behave like a chimpanzee. Primal, instinctual, synchronized.

Unbound from the chains of the modern world, they are truly free.

3) We’re born as nothing

 Why wouldn’t we take for granted things we don’t even remember learning? Using a toilet, eating with a fork, speaking, walking… we don’t know anything when we’re born.

 All those lessons stack on top of each other to form adults, where lessons continue to stack, but not quite so enormously. As I watched my friend’s two-year old insist on playing with his tremendous toy car when people were coming over, I said to him “Hey, there’s people coming over, let’s go interact with them.” He doesn’t know social etiquette, or even how to greet someone. He’s learning. Though he’s gotten quite good at the greeting bit lately, his newest lesson.

 Those are the easy one’s – the tangible actions we all see one another do. But what about the internal, the means that shape our lives beyond the basic functioning? How will they learn to understand their emotions, communicate, and separate their base instincts from those higher roads that serve them best? 

It’s scary. It’s scary to look at kids and realize how everything they will learn must be taught. They’ll have their own natural abilities and inclinations, but how those manifest will result from the input their parents give them.

Pressure? 

4) Energy

What is the factor that keeps a kid who doesn’t know how to do anything alive in the perilous world around him?

Energy

Mom, Dad, and whoever else is in charge, have to supervise. Not a passing glance like you might give your dog while you work, but a pressing awareness. There’s a wide variance on how much supervision one kid needs from another, but when they’re toddlers and below - the general level is high. 

From 6:00pm to nearly 10:00pm, my friend’s son did not stop. He wasn’t being a bad kid, he was merely being a kid. This toy, that thing, over there, up here, that way, this way, up, down, hungry, full, cry, run… nonstop. Sometimes it’s fun to be a part of, sometimes it’s not. Either way, the only thing keeping him from flying off a second story balcony is you. 

Good thing there’s ample means for parents to optimize their lives to have as much energy as possible… right. How often does a parent get dialed in sleep, nutrition, and exercise? It is a struggle to survive, every day. The kid comes first, because without you, they can’t do anything! Clearly we’re capable of these tremendous exertions as a species, but they are not without pain. 

As time went on in the evening I was with the little terrorist, I began to think to myself – no one could do this alone.

5) Two parents

In some sense people do raise kids solo - single parents are sadly not a rare phenomenon. Logistically though, there is hardly anyone that is the sole caretaker of their child, without any other worldly responsibilities that bring them away. Someone is there to help, in some way, sometimes.

Without a deep dive on the evidence behind raising children and parental dynamics, we can merely look at the modern landscape we live in. Anyone that claims one parent can be equal to or better than two is full of shit. 

When you think deeply about it, two parents is the minimum. Getting back to the idea that we share a tremendous amount of similarities with apes, look at how their family structures work. Raising young is a communal effort.

With that in mind, consider how millions of people live: Dad goes to work every day, while Mom raises the pack. Where’s Mom’s break? Only Dad can relieve her once he’s finished a full day’s work? That is a tough way to live that no one should opt into.

But where have our communities gone? Why have our families shrunk? That’s for another day, a full write up of how individualism destroyed the West. Take me for example: I don’t currently have a home, but my sister lives in Colorado, Mom is working on moving to north Georgia, and my Dad still lives in Miami. I’m a little ways off from having a kid, but when I do, what’s it going to look like? Ideally I’ll live nearby my family in wherever we’ve transplanted too, but who knows.

The minimum is two, and that’s not even good.

6) Mom

My Mom set an example that has shattered the ideologies of countless women I’ve encountered. After graduating at the top of her class from the University of Miami’s law school, she worked for about a year before she got pregnant with me. Once I was born, my Mom didn’t go back to work for ten years (my sister was born three years after me).

When I was younger I thought nothing of it. As I got older, my Mom began to share that other women had spoken ill of her decision to a full time Mom.

Supposedly it meant she was dumb, unsophisticated, lazy even. I knew those things weren’t true about my Mom, but I didn’t understand why they would even think such a thing until I got to the age where people started having kids. My Mom was always clear on her rationale – we were her kids to raise, not some strangers’.

Not so long ago, women were unable to do what they wanted. There were actual restrictions in place on their liberty. Things changed, slowly but surely. Today, women are capable of doing anything a man can. They have one of the most important gifts of a free life – choice.

I’ve worked in two of the most idealized professional fields – law and technology sales. Believe me when I tell you, that for the vast majority of women, they are not going to feel a greater sense of fulfillment filing motions or making cold calls, versus raising their very own children.

But for those that do, great. No, truly – good. Everyone makes their own choices, and I’m not here to tell anyone what to do.

For the full time Moms, theirs is a more difficult job by far – with greater stakes and higher demands. Anyone that chooses it deserves nothing but the utmost respect.

Kids are wild. I look forward to having them, but am also making sure to enjoy the now. Anticipation is one of our greatest drivers of positive emotions, but I’m careful to not forsake what is real and before me. 

Sincerely,

Jacob

P.S. Back in America with Winston… too good.