Sometimes I wish I had a time machine. I would go back to 1979 and the year I was one. I’m not sure what I thought about that age while I was there, but I know for certain that as an adult, I can’t think of any age I would like to be more.
When you are one, you can get away with anything. Because what are they gonna do? You don’t understand cause and effect enough (during the first half of that year) to really let time outs do anything for you. And I don’t think even the most hard core of corporal punishment proponents (I don’t advocate it at any age) would advocate hitting a one year old. Parents can try, but usually the best they can do is remove you from a situation which usually hurts them more than you.
If you are in a store, you can walk around knocking everything you can find off of the shelf. You know Mom will follow you around picking it all up (or risk being kicked out of the store,) and she’ll be so busy cleaning up after you, that you’ll have plenty of time to wreck more havoc.
If the priest at church is giving a particularly long and boring sermon, you are the only one in the church who can scream at the top of their lungs in frustration. Everyone else will be thinking it, but you are the lucky one to say it. And if you were five or six and displayed this behavior, you would surely get dirty looks. But at one — people just give you knowing glances and think of how cute you are.
You can protest anything you like and you really don’t need to worry about pesky little things like feasibility or reality. Most protestors would need to at least pretend their demands were reasonable. No one would take an adult seriously who was protesting the sun going down too early. But you don’t have to worry about things like reason. You can scream, hit, break things, do whatever you want, all because it is raining outside and you want it to stop NOW.
If someone is pissing you off, you can be sure that you can piss them off even more. Imagine Mom has the gall to spend an hour at the stove making a healthy meal for you. Obviously this is a complete injustice and is more than enough to annoy any little child. But if you’re one, you don’t have to take it lying down. You can scream at her legs and pray she’s wearing sweat pants so you can continue to pull them down during the whole hour of cooking. And when she is finally done and quite proud of her leafy greens and chicken, you can take one look at it and throw it across the room. Of course, right in the direction of the dog because if the dog eats it, she can’t even try to clean it off and re-feed it to you.
And speaking of food, hunger protests can be particularly effective. Once you’re an adult, if you refuse to eat, not many people care. But if you are a toddler, you know your parents have to feed you — it’s the law after all. So if you refuse to eat your chicken, you get to see them perform all sorts of tricks to try to get it in your mouth. If you have been particularly good at breaking down their barriers that day, you might even get them to hide all of your chicken in a fork full of cheese or dip it in fruit juice before handing it to you. They have to feed you, so there is no reason to settle for anything less than exactly what you want.
And finally, I think the best part of being one has to be that you do not have to ever be miserable by yourself. If you are in a funk or a bad mood, all it takes is some incessant screaming and throwing of things to make sure that you have plenty of company in your misery.
I guess the trick of being one is to enjoy it while it lasts because it doesn’t last long. Even towards the second half of the year, parents start to pick up on the fact that you know more of what’s going on than you let on. Principles of cause and effect soon start making their way into your world, wrecking havoc on everything. Soon enough, time outs appear and you lose privileges. Any parent worth their salt isn’t going to let a three year old act like a 15 month old.
Unfortunately, none of us really have the mental capacities to appreciate the stage while we are there.
Now I probably sound bitter about one year olds today, and really nothing could be further from my feelings. I love one year olds. I could do without the tantrums, but then you would also have to do without the hugs and giggles and kisses. At that age, they are still so very close to being infants and yet they can interact and play games. They can make you laugh just as easily as they laugh themselves.
But some days…