Becoming an adult, one toddler tantrum at a time.

A letter from a father at the park with his daughter

My daughter at another park.

On a recent trip to the park, my two-year-old daughter had a meltdown that triggered my own frustration, shame, and a massive epiphany about what it means to be a good man, father, and adult. 

I started taking my daughter to a different park every day after day care. My wife and I alternate picking up my daughter on different days. With both of us having a full-time job and a second job, plus the additional logistics it requires to get a two-year-old anywhere, it is a big investment of time and energy to make daily visits to the park. But parenting is just one big investment of time and energy. The effort has so far always been worth it.

At just over two years old, all of our daughter’s tools for communication are blunt, but she is picking up two to three new words per week. She is learning to say a lot. On the way to the park that day, she started saying, “poush!” Which is how she tells me she wants one of the fruit puree squeeze pouches I have ready for her when I pick her up. 

It was an overcast day. I pulled the stroller out, unfolded it, and put her in it. It had been in the backseat because the trunk was full, and the whole way, she stopped every few minutes to touch it and say, “Dada, my shrolla!” letting the last syllable linger and move up a note. She said it in a very particular kind of funny whiny tone, like she was insinuating, “actually Dada, I don’t know what your plans are, or why you have this in your backseat, but this is my stroller.” 

The first twenty minutes or so of the walk were pure bliss. We giggled and she pointed at things and said what they were. I knew what she meant three-quarters of the time. She still struggles with some distinctions, and argued with me when I saw a bird that it was a duck, or that a duck was actually a bird, and how I was wrong about other similar things. 

Around halfway, she started fussing and said she wanted to get down. So I brought her down and she started to walk. 

Once she was out of the stroller and running around, I started to lose the beat of our afternoon. “Dada, duck!” She would yell. She’d run back and forth along the path and pause when people jogged by and waved. She started a silly game where she’d go, “oh no, I fall down,” and squat. Then as soon as I was getting the hang of what she was doing, she would change the game and waddle-jog fifteen yards away. It is funny to say but it felt personal. I felt competing priorities, like wanting her to have a good time, but also wanting her to understand what to do and not do for her own safety, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little embarrassed at having all these strangers see my daughter not listen to me. 

We had probably covered an eighth of a mile in this fashion when I realized we needed to start making our way back toward the car. And thus commenced act three of the visit to the park. She did not want to walk back, and she did not want to get in the stroller. I coaxed, I laughed, I commanded, I reasoned. When I tried to get her toward the stroller or tried to head her off on the path, she screamed and cried. I tried all the little tricks, using different language, empathizing, and kneeling down to her level. Eventually, I just had to physically lift her up and strap her into the stroller. 

She strained against me and against the stroller. She would calm down and I’d ask her if she wanted to walk. Lately, it has seemed that she is capable of understanding conditional (if, then) logic when she wants to do something, but suddenly loses that ability when it suits her. (I am hesitant to accuse a two-year-old of anything duplicitous, but that is what it seems like.) I’ll say, “if you sit down on the couch, then you can eat these berries,” and she’ll run to the couch. But sometimes like on that day at the park I might say, “if I let you down from the stroller, then you cannot run away,” and she’ll agree. But then when I let her out of the stroller, she bolted away immediately. 

This pattern happened three or four times until finally I put her in the stroller–strapped all the way in–a muzzle short of Hannibal Lecter. She wailed under the watchful eyes of the walkers and joggers. We walked for a few minutes and her wails turned to cries and finally to whimpers. “Dada?” She asked. “Get down?” 

We were about two hundred yards away from the car. Unable to internalize the lesson of the last half dozen times, I let her down. She held my hand and walked about fifty yards before she started pulling away from my hand and starting the same stuff, sitting down, walking off the path, dancing around. I went to put her in the stroller and she screamed, “no shrolla!” 

“Do you want to walk?” 

“No,” she said, furiously shaking her head.

“Do you want me to carry you?” 

“Yes, Dada.” 

So she sat on the crook of my left arm while I pushed the stroller with my right and walked the last football field-and-a-half to the car. As I approached the door, she began straining and whining but not for anything in particular. I packed her into the car seat and gave her a pouch. Then I texted my wife, “have some dinner ready–she’s in a mood.” I told her our daughter would probably eat and pass right out right after we got home. 

When we got home, our daughter whined a lot but she ate the dinner and was in a better, if mercurial mood. While she sat in the high chair eating, my wife and I downloaded our day as we prepared our own dinner and did little odds-and-ends chores. At some point, talking about the day, I get to the story of taking her to the park. Our daughter hears “park” and perks up and repeats it. 

“Did you like the park?” I ask her in a kind of sing-songy voice. 

“Yes!” She sat up and kicked her feet, smiling with her whole body. “I like park! Dada park!” 

My chest tightened with a tension of joy and fear. And I thought of times recently when I remembered memories from my own childhood with my parents. I remembered times when our family had “rough times” or was going through something, or had “great times.” It’s tough to articulate how–and I may have been uniquely myopic–but it took me having a child to see my parents as people independent of our family unit. 

When our family went through something, the family went through it. I rarely thought then, even into adulthood, about what the inner life of my mom or dad must have been like during that time or how my reactions affected them. The things that happened to our family were like weather events. And instead of thinking of my parents as people inside the house, I always thought of them as the house. 

Like once in seventh grade, something happened to my parents' business, and our income was slashed dramatically by eighty to ninety percent for months. I know it was rough on the family. We ate a lot of spaghetti. There was tension. But it was almost like a tornado was outside and the walls were creaking. What happened to my parents was only of concern insofar as it affected me. 

After my daughter was born, I started to reflect on how that time might have affected my Mom. What did she think about after she put us to bed? How did it affect how she viewed my Dad? How did the way we acted affect my Dad? What did he think and feel when he was working those crazy hours trying to find additional income? Did he ever question his decision to quit his job and start the business? 

I could have been less inwardly focused, and it’s something I’m still trying to get better at, but I also think that this self-centeredness is fairly typical of children. I think that even calling it self-centeredness is unfair, as it implies children could be more altruistic. They don’t even have a sense of self to give away yet. 

I can already see this dynamic starting with my daughter. At the park, I felt like we were locked into an interpersonal conflict. She was struggling against me, defying my will, making me look silly in front of the onlookers–or so I thought. But to her, my feelings and thoughts were ambient noise at best. She was at the park trying to do park things, and all of our “butting heads” was forgotten at the end, when she looked back at the park and loved it. 

And I realized that this is actually a sign that I’m doing the right thing. A big part of being a good father–or frankly, a good adult–is being mindful enough to have compassion and theory of mind for other people even though they will not always have the same for you.

This extends beyond just my role as a father. I remember a conversation I had with a younger man who was caught up in something he thought was unfair. It was eating his lunch but he needed to just let it go. I tried to condense and paraphrase good advice I’d received over the years and said, “becoming a man means doing things because they’re the right thing, not because you expect rewards or reciprocity.”

The little dance my daughter and I did in the park, where we advanced two steps and took a step back, and I’d restrain her and let her go, was a variation of this. It was my job to be steady, to do the right thing, and to create the environment for a lesson and a memory to happen. It’s not because if I do this I’ll get the right reaction, or something good will happen, or the people at the park will think I’m a great Dad. It’s because it’s the right thing to do as her father. 

To be the man and father I want to be, this is how I should show up in all the places in my life: do the right thing and create the environment for more of the right things to happen. I am blessed because I had parents who thought this way as well.

I need to remember that I’m not the only person to whom this dynamic applies. So I make an effort to see the people in my life as fully developed. They come complete with an inner monologue and starring role in their own life–beyond the supporting role they play in mine. I fail a lot at remembering this but I need to remember it, especially when I realize it’s not reciprocated. Being the person I want to be requires that I remember that showing empathy and cultivating a theory of mind for others are important when I realize people aren’t doing the same for me. That might be when it’s most important. 

So the next time a storm is outside, my wife and I will probably be sitting at the table or cuddling in bed with our daughter, but I should remember that she doesn’t see us as another victim of the storm but rather as an extension of the walls.