Teachable Moments on the Journey from Toddler to Man
Developing Empathy in My Three Year Old Toddler
He was a different kind of baby, and I can say that confidently.
I’ve given birth to three boys who are now in their early and late twenties. Child rearing was pretty typical with my older boys. They experienced colic and ear infections. They enjoyed impromptu tours of the kitchen cabinets, fished tissue paper (and a bunch of other gadgets) out of the toilet, and of course woke up in the middle of the night to yell in such a way that the neighbors could have questioned, rightfully so, my young parenting skills. We raised all three boys with the typical dramatics and very little theatrics.
After my divorce, I finally met the perfect man and decided it would be no big deal to start all over again. So, at the age of 40ish, I choose to have another child.
He is now three years old, and he did none of the things my older sons did. Bryce is different. His behavior didn’t require us to child-proof the house. As an early toddler, he was methodically cautious about going near the pool. He’d get close to its edge. He might even put his fingertips into the water. But then he always drew back, slowly and thoughtfully, his curiosity never so piqued with the water that he showed a desire to get closer to it. He never kept us awake to pace the floor in the wee hours of the morning. He never needed to go for a ride in the car to calm him down. He was, well, perfect.
But that’s changing. He’s growing up now. Three years into this new parenting thing, I’ve realized that I’m growing up to. I’m not the mom I was in my early twenties. I’m much more aware now. I’m purposeful. I’ve seen what can happen when parenting isn’t done, right. With the older young men, I’m cleaning up impatient parenting and correcting bad parenting. Through it all I keep hearing my former professor who used to say, “You will spend time teaching your child how to be a good person now as they grow, or later when they’ve already grown up. Of course then it’s much harder and isn’t always successful.”
With Google just a finger tip away, teaching parents all they could ever want to know about being perfect, I’m now more cautious about how to approach my son. So when he started changing from the sleep-perfect baby to the now middle of the night sleep-walking toddler, I knew my approach had to be different.
Bryce now wakes up in the middle of the night and very nonchalantly joins me and my husband in our bed. He moves about, cautiously I must assume, walks approximately 60 feet from his room on the second floor of the house, then to and down both sets of stairs, then he walks another 70 feet into our bedroom. All without one peep, he climbs into our bed and perches himself right smack dab in the middle of the bed, placing himself between me and his daddy. Then he quietly falls back asleep.
Thus was the case last night, but this morning he did something new.
Bryce loves animal documentaries. We are currently watching one about Dolphins. We’ve watched it 21 times. I know. I’m counting.
This morning he asked me to turn the TV on.
“Daw Pin.” He smiled, while handing me the remote control.
I gladly complied with his wishes, turning on the documentary about the young dolphin who’s learning how to hunt for his own food. Then Bryce grabbed his two toy sharks. In a motion quicker than I could protect myself against, propelled by excitement, he violently threw the shark towards my back. Its fins stabbed me near the spine as its nose slammed into the area right below the left side of my back, near my kidney. I screamed in pain. Instantly I was hurt, and admittedly I was angry.
My husband began to rush toward me, realizing what happened when he saw the toy shark resting awkwardly near my hip, he stopped. He immediately stared at Bryce, who was starring at my hand as I grabbed my lower back, trying to hold back the tears. I was hurting. Not only was I now dealing with a toddler enacted shark bite per se, but I was beginning day one of my menopause head-ache. It was not a good morning, and I’m being kind with my terms.
Bryce, on the other hand, was in the midst of a moment he is too young to understand but is at the perfect age from which to learn.
My husband and I have been working hard to raise a strong man. To many parents that means something completely different. To many it means being stern. Hiding the truth. Showing a brave front. Leading with discipline instead of compassion. To many, unfortunately, that moment was a time to discipline Bryce. To us it was not. To Stan and me, that moment was a time to teach Bryce what hurt looks like, what it feels like, what its consequences are, and how to move forward. In that blink of a moment, as parents, we had to collect ourselves. It was our responsibility to shelve our innate responses, and instead to respond to the demands and responsibility of our first real teachable moment on empathy. That moment was a moment to not only feel pain, but to teach our son compassion for others and accountability for our own actions.
My innate response was to hide my pain and hide my cries. I quickly corrected that taught and embedded reaction. Bryce needed to know that his action, the shark hitting mommy because he threw it, ultimately hurt mommy. Even as a toddler he must know that actions have consequences.
He needed to see me cry.
He needed to see that he’d hurt me and that it was okay from me to show it. More importantly, he needed to see what loving through the hurt looks like.
Stan stood aside, watching Bryce. He was careful not to approach me and he was cautious to avoid approaching Bryce. This moment was between Bryce and I and there could be no intervention.
Bryce’s eyes began to water while he watched me hold my back and saw the tears crawling down my cheek.
He muddled an odd sound, a sound that seemed to come from where laughter dies and sorrow makes its first entrance into somebody’s brand new world. He stared at me. I stared at him.
“Bryce, that hurt Mommy.” I continued to hold my back, looking at him the entire time.
“You have to be careful sweetheart.”
Bryce’s gaze shifted from my back, to my face, back to my back, then he spoke.
“Saw-re.”
“I saw-re.”
Carefully he walked over to me, balancing himself on the mattress, then slowly he leaned in. Without hesitation I met him in the middle and we gave each other a kiss. I grabbed him and hugged him tight.
“Thank you,” I whispered, while his tiny arms clung to my neck.
Pulling him away slightly, I made sure he saw me smile. He returned that smile with one of his own.
Then he repeated,“Care bull.”
“Yes Bryce, be Care bull.”
“Daw Pin?”
“Yes Bryce, Dolphins.”
