Kids are funny. Truthfully they’re just unhindered tiny people. At my job, I get a kick out of watching two year olds solve problems.
For instance, the other day one little boy, let’s call him Jimmy, was playing with a three-piece train set. As he was playing, one of the parts of the train came unlatched and was left behind. Jimmy kept toting the other two parts around and didn’t seem to notice the missing link. That is, until Bobby came along. Bobby unsuspectingly took the lone train car and started playing with it. For a moment the boys played trains together, but once Jimmy realized Bobby’s toy was originally part of his own, he flipped. There was a hop and a scream and something indecipherable like “Waaah, that’s my, that’s my, it’s miiinnne, andIwantitbacknowwww!” uttered from Jimmy’s tiny, yet powerful, mouth. Bobby didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he was mad about it. The solution? A screaming match. The boys just started screaming at the top of their lungs at each other. No words were exchanged or hits or anything, just high-pitched screeches. I think they forgot what they were screaming about after some point because, let’s face it, playing who can scream the loudest is way better than playing trains. Eventually an adult stepped in and broke up the scream-off and later on the boys successfully played trains together.
I think the hardest part about being a two year old is figuring out what emotions are and sorting through them. Jimmy is a prime example of this. On a separate occasion from the train set incident, Jimmy was super into building a really high tower out of blocks when lunchtime rolled around. The daycare is on a tight feeding schedule that’s the same every day: 9:00am breakfast, 11:00am snack, 12:00pm lunch. The day revolves around eating. Anyway, when lunchtime was announced, Jimmy didn’t want to stop building his tower (I couldn’t blame him, he’d almost successfully used all the pieces available and it was looking pretty legit). The main woman who runs the daycare, Mrs. D, told him he had to stop playing or he’d be forced to forgo lunch. Jimmy was torn. Continue building the world’s greatest tower or eat the food he undoubtedly wanted in his tummy? Jimmy was so frustrated by the scenario that he started to panic. He wiggled and squirmed and started to huff and puff during his inability to process his emotions. The decision-making conversation went something like this:
Mrs. D: “Jimmy, just breathe. What do you want to do? Come join your friends for lunch or keep playing?”
Jimmy: “Uh, um, uh, ummmm. I just wanna bang my head.”
