Dear Toddler Parents,
On behalf of all parents who are quarantined with children older than toddlers, I want to offer an apology. This health crisis will serve as a defining moment in our lives as well as the lives of our children. Life as we know it has stopped, or at least it's been put on pause.
But you toddler parents don’t just have to worry about your family’s safety as well as potential economic fallout from statewide lockdowns. You’re stuck inside for weeks on end with a tiny terrorist whose sole goal in life seems to be ruining your life. You may think no one sees you, but we parents of post-toddlers do. And even though we’re so happy we’re not you, we apologize. There is no kind of bad karma or life payback that should involve being stuck at home 24/7 with a toddler.
Being around a toddler for an extended period of time is like running a marathon without shoes on while the finish line keeps getting moved. Just when you think you’ve gotten toddlerdom down — they’re sleeping, eating real food without hurling it against a wall, or not using their pants as a toilet — they do what toddlers do, and they switch up, regress, or just say, “Nah, I’m not doing that.”
That’s to be expected, or at least survived, when you sign up for parenting. If your toddler is your first child, you had some sense that there was an age that ended with “Terrible.” Maybe your little cutie didn’t go through the Terrible Two’s, but then the 3’s or 4’s are probably awful. If you haven’t gotten there yet, you know a tornado is coming filled with potty training, big kid beds, and teeth. There will be so many teeth.
Now life has played a little trick on you and taken away preschool, visitors, excursions, safety, and most probably babysitters or nannies. So now you and your partner are alone with a small human being who has the energy of two adults but the capabilities of a 2-month-old squirrel. Oh, and toddlers have the will of a herd of bulls. When you say no to them, they like to remind you just how willful they can be.
That’s all good, except your current life circumstances is a life of no. No going outside. No seeing other people. No museums, play dates ,or bounce house birthday parties. No licking things. No touching things. And no putting random things in your little toddler mouth, which are all at the top of the list of favorite things toddlers insist on doing.
Oh, and let’s not forget no going outside without a mask covering your nose and mouth. If you’ve ever tried to keep a shoe on a toddler’s foot, multiply that difficulty factor by 4,000 and you probably get just how difficult it is to keep a mask on a toddler’s face. I won’t even address trying to get a toddler not to put his hands in his mouth.
Since toddlers can’t do much for themselves, your workday is all but shot unless you can work for the two seconds your toddler decides to nap, because he just learned how to say the word “fire truck” and wants to say it 257 times instead of napping. So you may lose your job, but at least you’ll have more time to watch the same episode of “Peppa Pig” on loop because your kid won’t let you change the channel.
So even though we parents of kids older than a toddler can farm our children off to YouTube and Fortnite, just know that we are thinking of you and we apologize for the ever-moving finish line that is the marathon of staying home with a toddler. Sure, it pales in comparison to getting sick with the virus, but quarantining with toddlers is a grind.
We’re so sorry.
Hang in there. You’ve come this far. You’re almost there… maybe.
Sorry,
Everyone Else
