The Benefit of Nagging

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.