Today, my three-year-old expressed great interest in helping me do the dishes.
Let me step back.
Today, my three-year-old, as she often does, sabotaged my loading of the dishwasher by insisting on closing it before I had finished loading it. I grew frustrated, as I often do. But today, I knelt down to her and said, “Why aren’t you listening to me?” She didn’t respond. I took a breath and reminded myself that she doesn’t have an obligation to listen to me. I don’t want to raise an obedient child. I want to raise a helpful, kind, curious, willing child. So I rephrased my question as a statement. “You know, Zelda, if you want to be my sous chef in the kitchen, a sous chef has to follow instructions from the chef. It’s an important part of the job.”
Let me take another step back.
She helped me make scrambled eggs that morning. She cracked the egg, stirred the yolk, poured it in the pan, sprinkled cheese. Hence, my sous chef. I learned to say yes to her interest in cooking a few weeks ago in an effort to get her more willing to eat vegetables. I thought, maybe if she helps cook them, she’ll take pride in eating them. The experiment hasn’t resulted in vegetable enthusiasm yet but she loves helping with her eggy weggs.
So there I am, ready to usher her out of the kitchen for fiddling with the dishwasher for the tenth time that morning so I can clean with the speed and efficiency to which I’m accustomed. I am a machine in my kitchen routine. But I considered her enthusiasm about the eggs and wondered if the same curiosity existed for the dishes, but maybe she didn’t know she could participate. Maybe she didn’t have the ask.
I said, “If you can follow my instructions, do you want to help me with the dishes?”
Her face lit up. “Yes!”
I gave her each dish and told her where to put it. She held the plates so carefully, looked for the right slot in the metal drawers. Like a puzzle, she tried to discern how a round mug could fit in a square grid, and then she smiled like sunshine to discover that it did. “Snug as a bug,” she said.
The dishes were deposited haphazardly in the washer. Wayward plates and bowls wedged in inefficient patterns. I could have fit twice as many dishes in there had I done it myself and in half the time, but as we stood over the sink to give a frying pan a good scrub, my daughter looked up at me, washed with content, and said “I love doing the dishes with my favorite Mommy.” Then she put her head on my shoulder, and I cried.
Say yes to the inconvenient things that help someone else. Say yes to teaching, and discover joy in what has grown to be mundane.
Toddlers are exhausting and messy and frustrating for a fast-paced, orderly world. But slow down, meet them where they are, say yes, and I guarantee you there will be magic.
They don’t like tantrums either.
When she’s a teenager refusing to do the dishes, I’ll hearken back to this day that she might not remember. All of these days, these moments, that shape her but somehow seem like they’re meant for me. Like it’s my destiny to be the keeper of memories that she will forget. I’m humbled to play such a part. There may be nothing I can do to reach my teenager in the same way I reached my toddler today. I’ll just go back to my efficient solo act of kitchen cleaning. The machine who slowed down for a little while because someone asked her to, and she said yes.