7 ways learning to talk can catch parents off guard

Starting to talk is one of the biggest steps that our small kids make in life. It’s also awesome as parents to hear them suddenly string a sentence together that seems longer than anything that’s ever been published in The Sun. But before we get too excited, let’s remember that there are two sides to this picture. Here are 7 ways kids learning to speak that can throw us off guard.
 
1 - Copying the words you don’t want them to (2 years and 3 months)
 
Two-year olds are excellent at repeating things you say. This is unfortunate when you are used to swearing a lot, or even just a very little bit. My wife an I like to say things like ‘where on earth did he hear that?!’ when he drops is Duplo and shouts ‘sh*t!’. Or, ‘he must have got that from nursery!’, when he tuts mid-drawing a circle to clearly articulate ‘FFS’ (leaving as an acronym in case his grandma reads this).
 
Truth is, the chances are pretty high that it’s come from one the toddler’s parents when we faced a particularly strong moment of frustration and let our tot-sensitive guard drop.

Advice I was told, listened to, then ignored whilst potty training Little Bear, and was all the happier for it: 

• Toilet training your child before they’re 2 (*if you live in the 1950s maybe*) 
• ‘Stay consistent’ - don’t start using pants and then go back to nappies (feels cruel) 
• Ignore your child when they get upset about the experience of wetting themselves 
• Give your child a treat every time they use the potty (backfired) 
• ‘Stay consistent’ - don’t use toilets/potties and a nappy at the same time (why?)
• Wake your child up in the middle of the night (*insane*) when they ‘make the switch’ so they don’t pee in their sleep 

January this year, I started looking at toilet training Little Bear. I felt under a lot of pressure to make this work, and was slightly terrified about the idea of having to clean poo off the sofa and mop up endless puddles of wee, especially after becoming a nappy changing pro after the last 2 years.  

Towards Equal Parenting
On a cold evening in early 2016, my wife and I underwent the biggest change of our lives. Just before 5 pm, our son was born. We were both exhausted from the birth (her obviously more than me), but ecstatic at getting to finally hold old tiny troll. It was a feeling that’s difficult to describe: excitement and trepidation, as your nurturing and protective instincts kick in. This is something we were about to do together.
 
But shortly after my baby was born, I was told I had to leave the hospital without him… My wife, in desperate need of some sleep, was told she had to look after my son for the night, alone. Two and a half years later, I still face this disconnect between the kind of caring and fully responsible dad I want to be, and the dad others expect me to be. This attitude of placing all the burdens of childcare on mum and telling dad to leave doesn’t make sense, and isn’t fair on mums or dads.

​​I haven't met a dad who hasn't been overrun by goose-bumps and nurturing instinct when taking care of his little trolls. Over 60% of parents believe dads should have an equal role in parenting, and a majority of new dads are now saying they want more time and responsibility with their kids. On top of that, the benefits for dads, mums and kids of more equally shared parenting are backed up by a growing body of research.

‘I awake Pappa, Moomin’s awake, I awake, time to wake up, I awake Pappa’

The light starts getting too strong for the blackout blinds and Little Bear climbs into our bed and starts patting my head. I know that any movement will be an admission of being conscious, so I stay perfectly still, and naïvely believe that he will give up after a few minutes and let me go back to sleep. I slowly open one eye.

‘Now you awake Pappa! I awake! Weekabix! You awake Pappa! Mamma look! Pappa awake!’ and the wake up dance and jump on Pappa begins.
 
Getting out the door with a toddler is never easy. But when they’ve moved firmly into the ‘boundary testing stage’ at 2  and a half, it becomes all the more difficult.

Why mums and dads make equally good parents

Attitudes are changing fast around the role of dads in the family. But we’re still stuck with a lot of outdated baggage that guilts mums into being left with all the childcare responsibility, and implies that dads ‘naturally’ don’t belong in the role of a lead parent. 

Little Bear was happily riding his bike in the garden at nursery the other day when another kid, let’s call him Steve, started following him. Steve got closer and closer until he started playfully bumping into Little Bear’s bike and giggling. Should I intervene?
 
Maybe not, Little Bear is getting cross with Steve but no one’s getting hurt. In fact, Little Bear might even be learning some life skills about dealing with annoying people without parents swooping in. Maybe it’s an opportunity for him to learn how to talk to Steve and persuade him to- Wait! Little Bear’s buddy, Suzie, has just stepped in and pushed over Steve’s bike. Intervene? But how?

Suzie then takes Steve’s bike and rides off in victory shouting ‘My turn! My turn!’ Intervene? Hell no.

​Two and a half thousand years ago, Socrates asked what Justice was. Ever since, adults have struggled with this question. What is fair, how should we live our lives, how should we treat other people? Not so for a toddler. Toddlers have an innate knowledge of justice. They’ve understood it with absolute certainty months before they can even say it. For them, the obvious nature of justice requires swift and outraged retribution for anyone who challenges its unbreakable rules.
 
When a toddler is well rested, then Justice is kinder, calmer and has more giggles. Justice can be reasoned with. On the other hand, the tired toddler has no charity. When their dispensing their Justice, no quarter should be given, and inconsistency is expected and utterly fair. Whether they want the Weetabix dry and wet at the same time, or want their trousers off whilst staying warm, no clemency should be given to the parent who can’t square these circles.

The other week I was at Story Time at the London Docklands Museum. The kids and toddlers all sat round enrapt by the enchanting puppet show… No. Some of the kids were listening, but toddlers being toddlers were also just doing their own thing. One toddler’s dad was sitting on the floor near his son, waving at his little guy. The toddler stood up, bumped into a bigger kid and fell over. The tears started coming, and the dad leant forward and slowly began to pick him up to soothe him. 

Then, as if from nowhere, a woman knocks parent and kid alike to one side to swoop in and pull the child from his father’s arms. Is this a kidnapping!? No, it’s the kid’s mum. She shoos away the dad and takes her son to one side to comfort him, whilst the dad stands there, awkwardly, not sure what to do with his now empty hands.

​The scenario and the feelings involved are familiar to most active parents. ​Some parents are hit by the weight of responsibility, and a need to surge into action at any cost to help their kid. Others will have the same need, but are stopped dead in their tracks by the sense that they’ve just had rank pulled on them by their boss. 

​Your toddler is always one-step ahead. Every problem that pops up, sleeping, moving, eating (or not eating), you’ll finally get to grips with it just as they move onto the next thing that knocks you for six. Like a bug that keeps on mutating each time your immune system gets use to it.
 
But this step forward’s different. Finally Little Bear’s moving onto familiar ground. He’s honing his ‘People Influencing’ skills, and starting to negotiate. The toddler’s outmanoeuvring of our ability to parent is no longer an unconscious leap of his developing body, it’s now moving into conscious thinking of how he can outsmart his carers. Working in negotiation for the last 10 years, this latest shift is making me proud (especially when he outsmarts me). He’s gone all these little ‘needs’ inside him, and now he can start thinking about smarter ways of getting them.

The toddler's vocab gets bigger by the day. But however many new ‘words’ they pick up, half the ones they use are always the old favourite: No. There're are plenty of toddlers managing just fine with this one word.
 
In a short space of time Little Bear's really mastered the ‘no’. All in all he’s got 5 different no’s he uses during the week.
 
1. The sweet and patronising ‘no’
 
He tilts his head at us and gently frowns. It’s often accompanied by the wagging of a finger. This comes when we’ve broken a toddler rule: such as suggesting that he shouldn’t switch the washing machine off mid-cycle; that he might like to eat the food in front of him instead of painting the walls with it; or that he needs to take a nap whilst in the middle of playing with the fire-engine. 

Little Bear was at the playground yesterday, when a younger munchkin fell over and hurt her knee. The parent swooped up their little girl as the tears started rolling. Little Bear became transfixed by the hurting baby, giving a look that resembled a struggle with constipation. His little awkward anxious grin stared at the baby until she calmed down. A few awkward steps towards the baby: “Is it ok Pappa?” “Yes, Little Bear, the baby was sad but she’s had a cuddle and is ok now”. He then runs off to throw himself recklessly down the nearest slide.

Ever get the feeling your kid sees you as a liability? It makes sense for teenagers. It’s what everyone expects from them. They’re suddenly more self-conscious than they’ve ever been in their little lives and feel the need to doggedly guard their new found reputations with their mates. They start getting their own tastes in music, films and dress-sense, and see these things as a way to tell the world who they are.
 
What you don’t expect as a first time parent of a smaller person is that there’s a similar leap for the little people between 1 and 2. Here are some things I’ve spotted that hail that new stage in a little troll’s navigation into social awkwardness and need to prop up their new found reputation.

​Only parents understand their toddler's babbling
​
*Tap tap* *tap tap*. Someone’s patting my forehead. As my eyes open with a little morning light sneaking through the blinds into the bedroom, Little Bear is informing me that it’s time to get up. ‘God morgon Lila Björn!’ I can faintly make out his smile as he crawls over to grab hold of me in a heart-warming hug saying what sounds like ‘Pappa! Pappa!’. Raise my arm to hug him back and he does a skilful role under my arm, over my belly and sits up next to me pointing at the lamp: ‘lappa! lappa!’ (‘Lampa’ in Swedish). So me and the lamp have the same name… I’m not jealous of the fact that he clearly has more interest in switching on a lamp than hugging his daddy, but it’d be nice to not have to share my name with a bedside reading aid.