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.

No Coffee, Just Love

3 Years:
"Mama, are you tired?""Yeah. I think I need coffee. Are you tired?"
"Yeah. But I don't need coffee. I just need love."

When I was a kid, I had noticed that there were some things that parents were especially fond of saying. In particular, they liked saying that their backs ached, that children were on their "last nerve," and that they needed coffee. Always, always, they needed coffee. And they said it in a way that always had some kind of passing subtext, or some sort of secret code they shared with other adults. From the tone they used, I half-believed that "my back hurts" and "I need coffee" actually meant something else altogether, because it seemed strange that adults all shared the same physical and mental needs at the same time, in a way that kids just couldn't get.

It wasn't until I was an adult myself that these things started to make sense. Somehow, between the day we leave high school and the day our kids start talking, all of us seem to develop a constant back ache, a cruel addiction to coffee, and a relentless feeling that the jabbering kids around us were on our last nerves. I don't know how it happened, but it happened to me despite my best efforts to forge some new path into parenthood that didn't involve coffee or back aches.

My daughter said she didn't need coffee, just love. I wish we could all go back to the time when a hug and a kiss were a solution to absolutely every problem in the world.

Parasaurolophus at 3:00

3 Years:
“Um, Mother? I’m a tiny baby parasaurolophus who needs to sleep right next to her mama parasaurolophus in a tiny little nest-bed. And I need to snuggle next to my mama parasaurolophus in case there are troodons who want to eat me.”
“Are you saying you want to sleep in my bed?"

“Um… yes?”

It was 3:40 in the morning.

At 3:40 in the morning, absolutely nothing makes sense, even when it’s condensed into short, accessible words that an average kindergartener would know.

At 3:40 in the morning, I was forced to decode a long string of scientific words behind a paleontologically themed make-believe game that I hadn’t been privy to.

At 3:40 in the morning, I arrived at the most likely conclusion about what was being said, since there are only a few things that a three-year-old is likely to need at 3:40 a.m. It didn’t involve request for water or bathroom help, so it must have been a request to sleep in my bed.

It turned out I was right. I allowed it and, hours later, woke up to a snuggly little kid, who was still convinced that she was a baby parasaurolophus, in my arms.

Sometimes parenthood would be made simpler by a child whose imagination is less active and whose vocabulary is a little more limited, at least at 3:40 in the morning. But simpler parenthood isn’t always rewarding parenthood. I’m more than happy to have the kind of kid who will wake me up late at night with a string of hexasyllabic words and a request for cuddles.

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.