What a Child Should Know

3.5 Years:
“I know I’m loved.”

Pop quiz: what should a child know by the time she’s three and a half years old? The names of colors? Five-word sentences? Basic grammar? At least 3,000 words?

Well, sure. It can’t hurt to know those things. And most child development experts will tell you that they’re important—and, if your kid isn’t quite up to speed with what’s expected for his age, it’s not a bad idea to get some extra help. Developmental delays exist and, without being addressed, can cause a lot of problems for children.

Still, I think that when you boil it down, there’s only one thing that a three-and-a-half-year-old really needs to know. A three-and-a-half-year-old needs to know that she is loved deeply, completely, and unconditionally. Hearing my daughter say, “I know I’m loved,” without prompting, let me know that I had really succeeded as a parent. If a child knows she’s truly loved, very little else matters.

Only to Discover You

3 Years:

“Which shirt do you want? The Lightning McQueen shirt that looks like three others you own, or this adorable organic cotton shirt with the stegosaurus?”

“Mama, I care about Lightning McQueen more than I care about organic cotton.”

There comes a time for every parent when we each have to admit that our kids aren’t precisely what we expected them to be and aren’t always going to have the same feelings or priorities as us. I thought that I was raising a peace-love-and-tie-dye earth-child who wouldn’t touch meat with a ten-foot pole and who would gladly seek out fair trade whenever it was available. But, as anyone could have predicted, that’s not what happened.

By the time my daughter could talk, she made it clear that she wasn’t going to be the person who I, youthful and naïve, had thought I could sculpt her to become. I hated cars. She loved them. I was anti-Disney and didn’t allow it in our house for years. She somehow figured out the characters and their names anyway. I’m vegetarian and she thinks chicken nuggets are the best thing on Earth. I couldn’t have turned her into someone she wasn’t, even if I had actually kept trying.

That was never driven home quite as much as when I was buying clothes for her and pointed out that she had a choice between a fair-trade, organic cotton shirt with an outline of a stegosaurus, and a much uglier, much baggier red tee that was no doubt made in a sweatshop by an enslaved child not much older than she was. Even when I pointed out what her choices were—and I did let her make choices, even when they weren’t choices I supported—she still let me know that she prioritized her beloved Disney-Pixar characters far more than she prioritized fair wages or environmental sustainability.

It was a little funny at the time, but in the long run, moments like that teach me a lot about parenthood, and I’m grateful for them. I understand now that it’s not my role to mold my children to be as much like me as possible, or to have the same beliefs or viewpoints. It’s my role to guide them to become the best person they can be.


"Nothing you become will disappoint me; I have no preconception that I'd like to see you be or do.  I have no desire to foresee you, only to discover you.  You cannot disappoint me."  
-Kahlil Gibran

Of Angels and Hopes

2.5 Years: “Angels really like to play with hopes.”

I thought that my toddler had said something extraordinarily profound and thoughtful. When she told me that angels like to play with hopes, I found myself pondering it frequently—the same way I had pondered her earlier claim that God was a rainbow. What a profound statement to hear from the mouths of babes.

Late at night, while I rocked her to sleep during fevers or passed hours by reading Henry and Mudge books, I would think about it. If angels exist, do they really like to play with our hopes? If there’s a God, does He tweak with our expectations on purpose, to teach us lessons or to help us figure out what we really need? If there’s a Heaven, is it where all of our hopes are satisfied, or is it where we learn to accept what we have already?

One day, we were visiting my grandmother when my daughter said it again: “Angels really like to play with hopes.”

I cocked my head to the side and asked, “What makes you say that?”

She climbed down from my lap and toddled to a small statue in my grandmother’s house, of an angel with broad, neatly sculpted wings. She pointed to the large harp where the angel’s fingers were permanently frozen.

“Hopes,” she said, pointing to the harp. “A hope, like this one. Angels really like to play with hopes.”