I picked up Elliot at daycare yesterday, and we walked
home. He was pretty good, actually ---
some days he dawdles to the point of frustration. Even when I’m not in a rush it gets
irritating, he constantly turns around and goes back.
For instance, he picked up a cracked half of an acorn. He
showed it to me, we wowed about it. I
explained to him about how those fall from trees. Then he saw a little crevice in the side of
the oak tree and went to stick the half-acorn in the crevice. Sure, I thought. He went up, stick it in there, looked to me
for approval, which I gave. Okay, let’s
keep walking. But he wanted to go back
and take it out of that crevice, and show it to me. And then put it back in. We did that a few times, and then I insisted
we keep walking. But he kept being drawn
back to it --- he would walk a few steps and then look back.
Walking down a busy Brooklyn
sidewalk with Elliot is a distraction-fest.
Yesterday he wanted to go into the Laundromat, then he saw some graffiti
on the side of a building and wanted to touch that; then every lock on a set of
mailboxes had to be touched; a gate opened and shut a few times; doggies
pointed out and approached if possible; other kids his age waved to;
oddly-colored stones embedded in the sidewalk bent down and examined; pieces of
trash approached to be poked (I didn’t let him get that far); the tiny holes in
the side of public trash cans examined.
And of course, throughout this process, I was the nag: Come on, let’s keep walking, hurry up, don’t
poke that, don’t pick that up, let’s go, keep walking.
Why? Like most
parents, I value my child’s curiosity. I
want Elliot to explore and learn and understand that world around him. So why don’t I just relax and let him do
it.
I think one of reasons has to do with brain space. Elliot, being a 2 year-old, does not know
which aspects of his surroundings are valuable to learn, and which are
useless. Undestanding how a washing
machine works: useful. Poking at trash,
maybe not so useful.
But he doesn’t know that.
So he just explores whatever
falls into his frame of vision.
And my nagging is a way of saying “That’s not useful. Don’t waste brain space learning about that
empty plastic bag soaked in beer.”
Or maybe that’s just a handy way of reframing my nagging in
a positive light.
