Bubble Wrap

3.5 Years:

“Hey, sweetie can you keep a secret? I’m going to show you the extra-special present we got for ou friend.”
“I’ll keep it a secret!”
“Okay… Here it is…”
“OH MY GOODNESS! YOU GOT HER BUBBLE WRAP!”

Value is very much in the eye of the beholder. I think we all remember the days when we genuinely valued a chocolate bar over a Rolex and didn’t understand the strange system of money and value that our parents used to navigate the world. For some very lucky people, that sense of wonder and intrinsic value never really goes away. Those are the people who would still be perfectly happy about receiving bubble wrap as a gift.

The gift in question was the most financially valuable item I had ever purchased, costing more than ten times what I had spent on any previous gifts. I had spent many months of savings on it and was thrilled about giving it to its intended recipient.

Of course, as soon as I opened the box that contained this treasure, my daughter got excited about the wrong thing: the bubble wrap it was packaged under. I ended up giving the bubble wrap to her, and I think she considered it to be the most wonderful gift I had ever given. The thing inside it? Secondary.

Makes my Mouth Taste Spicy

3.5 Years: “That makes my mouth taste spicy.”

My daughter, like me, has a weird neurological set-up called synesthesia, which means that some “wires” in her brain cross and cause her to experience sensory input in unusual ways: for example, by “seeing” music or “tasting” colors. For me, it’s weak and doesn’t have a tremendous impact on my life. It’s just a matter of having strange physical sensations in response to certain sounds. For my daughter, it is, or at least was, a major part of her life.

I first learned that my daughter had strong synesthesia when she was three years old and developed a strong aversion to glitter. Anything glittery or sparkly caused her to cry out in pain and grab her mouth. She would cry, “That makes my mouth taste spicy!” and would grimace, as if eating a chili pepper, while I fetched her a glass of water and hid the offending image. We eventually had to completely eliminate glitter from our home, even modifying our Christmas tree to get rid of “spicy” ornaments.

Her synesthesia has grown weaker over the years, but it’s still there. Glitter doesn’t bother her anymore, but she still describes experiencing tactile and visual sensory input in unusual ways. Over time, I found out that synesthesia is very common among autistic children and tends to peak in the toddler years. Interestingly, since most autistic (and even neurotypical) children aren’t able to clearly articulate their experiences at two or three years of age, most of them never express how they’re processing senses. Had my daughter been nonverbal, I would have never known that glitter was the trigger for her distress. She would have simply begun crying or screaming and I would have no way of knowing why.

It’s an important lesson to be learned—not just about human neurology and the development of senses, but also about how things aren’t always what they seem, particularly for special-needs kids. 

The Weird Truth About Christmas Stockings

3.5 Years:

OH MY GOD. I just realized something. A stocking... is like a giant sock!

Small epiphanies are the spice of life, and, when you’re three years old, tiny epiphanies are everywhere. I was hanging Christmas stockings when this one sudden realization really hit my daughter, who was at that point somewhere between a toddler and a child. Who knew that a stocking and a sock could bear such similarity?

While no one’s sure if it’s apocryphal, legend has it that there’s a good, specific reason behind the use of Christmas stockings, and it relates to the real Saint Nick of medieval Turkey. Supposedly, there was a family with young daughters who were just past puberty, which, in that day, meant that they needed to be married off quickly or find an unpleasant and dangerous job. Their father was grieving that he couldn’t cover a dowry so his daughters could go to good husbands. He would have to sell them into prostitution.

That night, the girls washed and dried all of their clothes and hung their stockings (or just plain old socks, depending on the version of the story) to dry by the fire. Supposedly, after the entire family had gone to bed, Saint Nicholas crept into the house and left gifts of gold coins—enough for a dowry—in each of the girls’ socks. They were then married off to good husbands who treated them well.

The good deed was commemorated with Saint Nicholas’s Day, on December 6^th, but the commercialization and modernization of winter holidays combined it into what we now celebrate as Christmas.

I wanted to tell my daughter this story, when she noticed that stockings hung on a mantelpiece look remarkably like socks hung to dry by a fire. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a way to tell the tale in a way that censored the grim reality of dads paying men to take their daughters, to avoid working as prostitutes in the night. Maybe she’ll hear that story later, but three years old wasn’t the time for it.

Stoned Teens and Autistic Toddlers

3.5 Years:
“OH MY GOD! A TALKING CUP! A CUP CAN’T TALK! OH MY GOD, A TALKING FLYING FRY-BOY! A FRY-BOX CAN’T TALK! A FRY-BOX CAN’T FLY! OH MY GOD, A TALKING MEATBALL! I WANT A MEATBALL LIKE THAT! I WANT A MEATBALL LIKE THAT!”

I had gone away to work for a few hours, leaving my daughter with a babysitter. Although we usually had a very strictly enforced screen-time limit (half an hour a day at 3 years), I had told the sitter that she could have up to two hours until I came home. When walked back through the door, my daughter didn’t even look up from the TV—she was far too focused on her new discovery, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It’s not exactly what I would have picked out for a three-year-old, but the overwhelming amount of delight was too charming. I couldn’t avoid cracking a smile.

A friend of mine pointed out that my daughter’s reaction to Aqua Teen Hunger Force was essentially the exact same as the reaction you would expect from a fifteen-year-old stoner. I’ve concluded that stoned teenagers and autistic toddlers have essentially the exact same neurology.

I'll Date When I'm Four

3 Years:
“Mama, may I date Levi?”
“No.”
“Why not?
“Because you’re three.”
“Then I’ll date Levi when I’m four.”

There are many arguments that I expected not to have with my daughter until she was at least thirteen or fourteen years old. The “you’re not old enough to date” discussion was among them. I think we all remember being at the age when it seemed completely irrational that our parents didn’t view us as mature enough or old enough to be having “real” relationships. While we can generally look back and understand their point-of-view ten or twenty years later, it always seems in the moment like they are being completely irrational and cruel.

Unfortunately, my daughter’s request for permission to date came far, far earlier than I could have expected, when a two-year-old classmate caught her attention.

Preschool “relationships” are neither harmful nor uncommon—in fact, child development experts regard them as a normal and healthy way that children learn to emulate adult relationships. They’re so common that many people will stoop down and ask toddlers and kindergarteners, “Do you have a boyfriend?” or will eagerly play along with their ideas that they’re actually dating. Even before my daughter’s request to date her classmate, I had prepared to slap the next person who asked me if my toddler had a boyfriend. Of course she doesn’t. She’s a baby.

Although I understand that letting preschoolers pretend to date is pretty much harmless, I shied away from endorsing her budding relationship because I know that toddlers can’t understand the difference between a game and reality. They don’t know that their Ring Pop proposals are make-believe and that they have boyfriends and girlfriends only in their fantasies. I didn’t’ want my child to develop confusion about what is and isn’t adults-only behavior because she’d seen and heard me refer to her games of make-believe as if they were real grownup relationships.

Neurotic? Maybe. But I’m not in a hurry to give a toddler approval to date, whether it’s just pretend or not.

Pitter-Patter

3 Years: “Mama, do you hear this? Do you hear? What do you hear, Mama? That’s right, Mama! You hear it! It’s the pitter-patter of little feet!”

I was working late one night when I heard the scuffling of bare feet in the hallway. To announce to the owner of the tiny feet that I knew she was there, I called out, "I think I hear the pitter-patter of little feet!"

Quickly, they made an audible dash back to the bedroom.

The next day, while I was working, I heard the sound again-- but his time, accompanied by narration. It was one of those rare but wonderful moments when parenting really does seem worthwhile, thanks to the help of a toddler who had figured out precisely how to issue that reminder. 

The pitter-patter of those little feet continued for over half an hour as she skittled up and down the hallway, making her tiny bare feet flip and flop with as much noise possible as she squealed, "It's the pitter patter of little feet!" I made a point of closing my eyes mid-work and remembering exactly where I was, what day it was, how the weather had been, how I was feeling, and what it sounded like. That was the day when I was actually rewarded for three years of motherhood with the pitter-patter of little feet. And my kid wanted to make sure I knew it.