purple people eater 2

Sometimes our toddlers try to tell us things, and sometimes, goddammit, we just don’t know what the hell it is that they’re trying to say. In case you haven’t divined from the tone of that opening sentence, this miscommunication can be just a wee bit frustrating. And sometimes it’s us – yes, us, the parents – that are being ignorant. Well, okay, not sometimes - usually.

Anna, Ben and I were chomping away on our burritos and mashed carrots during dinner this evening (a classic American meal), and Ben was doing a mighty fine job of feeding himself with a bowl and spoon. Now, before I go too far, I have to preface this story with another, older tale, but I promise it won’t last too long. You see, for the longest time when Ben considered himself full (or if he figured he could just skip the remainder of the nutritious bits in favor of some yummy grapes) he made us aware of his gastronomic contentment by throwing the remnant food on his plate at the nearest wall, floor, or parent. We tried for months to teach him why throwing your unfinished meal at the wall might not be the quickest way to assimilate yourself into society, myself using several expletives and “outside” voice levels. I’d point emphatically at his high chair table-top and say, “No , Benjamin! THIS is where you put your food when you’re done! HERE, goddammit, HERE!” and you can imagine the look on his face. Almost in tears, he would look up at me, thinking, “I know! My table! My table! Please! Put some grapes on my table! I don’t want any more of this green stuff!” as he whipped a green bean past my ear. And when it came time to let him eat with a spoon, whatever food he was spooning now had a passenger on its flight across the kitchen.

Which brings me to my story.

Today at dinner, when Ben was finished with his mashed carrots he held out his spoon in my direction and shouted “do dat!”, his brow furrowed as if his palate was tainted now that the carrots had grown cold. But of course I didn’t immediately catch on to what he was saying. I thought he was trying to tell me “My spoon! This is my spoon!” (because lately Ben has been quite fond of pointing these things out), when in fact what he was trying to say was, “This food is FINSIHED! Boo ya! Take my spoon, I’m outta here!”. Of course Anna knew immediately what was happening, being the smarter half of our unified parental unit, but it took me a few more moments to wrap my feeble brain around the issue at hand: that Benjamin was now well past his food-throwing phase and was in fact trying to hand his spoon over - politely, agreeably, and without hang-time. Anna simply took the spoon, said thank you, and followed the main course with an aperitif.

I just took my seat.

I learned a very important lesson this day: throwing food is bad--- no wait, I already knew that one (parenting can be so confusing). The lesson is: your wife is smarter than you, no matter how intelligent you’d like to think you are. And sometimes your toddler is smarter than you think. In fact, he’s learning so fast, there’s no way you can possibly keep up.

Oh yeah, and yelling is bad. Okay, so I learned three lessons today.