An adorable video was popping up on Facebook this past week. It was of a toddler following her mom around basically undoing everything she was trying to do. Mom would put clothes in the drawers and toddler would take them out, mom would put clothes in the dryer and toddler would shut the door on her, you get the picture. Adorable.
I find myself having a conflicted reaction to those videos. I’m torn between sweet memories of the many toddlers I’ve had in my life that also made those adorable messes and the reality of those children in my life who may never outgrow creating them.
Right now we’ve been referring to Christian as the toddler-teen. He loves to be helpful, he just doesn’t know the difference between help and interferring. The other day I put an item on the table by our basement door so I would remember to take it down the next time I headed down. I watched as he moved it from the table to the kitchen counter, because it was a kitchen item, in an effort to help put things right. Some days there are countless ways in which he “helps” and it can be crazy making.
One of the many major messes our girl has made over the years. She threw all this out the window and in to the back yard.
Callie has a history of making water messes in the bathroom. If we leave her alone in the bathtub she may take the shower sprayer and spray down the entire bathroom. A toddler wouldn’t have the ability to take down a sprayer and cause that extent of a mess and obviously they wouldn’t be alone in the bathroom in the first place. So first, the messes Callie at 14 yrs. old can make are on a much grander scale than a toddler and secondly we have been dealing with those messes, that are often adorable when a toddler makes them, for 12 years now. The adorableness has worn off and we are definitely in to annoying and sometimes dip our toes, or soak our socks, in to exceedingly frustrating.
Toddler messes are adorable because they end and then parents nostalgically remember how sweet that time was and perhaps, dare I say, wishing they could relive them. For many parents of children with developmental delays those memories are fresh and new, because they fear they may never end and the truth of it is, they might not.
For my fellow parents experiencing toddler-teens you never know what the future holds. Our 40 year old with Down Syndrome was a hurricane when he was 8 yrs. old. Those who didn’t meet him till he was an adult often don’t believe the epic story of his climbing over a booth in a restaurant and dashing in to the kitchen planting his hand squarely in the cake on the counter before we could reach him. Today he is slow, calm and quiet Never give up hope that calm may come. I’ve witnessed too many miracles in my kids’ lives to give in to the fear that the toddler-teen years may never end. Now excuse me while I, once again, attempt to scrap off the liquid bandage that toddler-teen squeezed all over the bathroom mirror, sink and counter. It may be a lost cause, but he is not.
