Toddlers - sophisticated social creatures (Anna)

Putting toddlers in a room together can be lots of fun, but is also a fascinating experiment in human interactions. As parents, we are duty-bound to teach our kids certain rules of social conduct. Nobody wants their kid to be the bully, we don't want our kids to bite each other, pull each other's hair or scratch. We believe that toddlers are highly territorial and have difficulty sharing; we want them to learn to share with each other, treat each other with respect, say "please" and thank you" etc. As they get older, we will probably teach them that lying is wrong, that it's not ok to be mean to each other, and a host of other values.

The thing is, parents haven't mastered any of these skills themselves. Many adults - under the guise of "avoiding conflict" and not hurting people's feelings - routinely lie, and what "respect" means is a highly fluid concept that nobody really agrees on. With all the furor recently about bullying in schools, nobody talks much about the fact that bullying in daily life is rampant. Most adults haven't learned to share - they have merely devised more complex rules for not having to. Adults regularly get confused about what is "mine" and what is "yours" - only it's usually not over dolls and crayons, but more abstract things like who owns what emotional baggage, or believing that the things they value (belief systems/friends/possessions, etc) must be the same things that other people value.

And, although we tend not to pull each other's hair literally, a lot of adult friendships are really no more sophisticated than those of a gaggle of fourteen year old girls, with all the accompanying gossip and pretence.

In some ways, I prefer toddler interactions. They're kind of more genuine, and less full of the artifice that we pretend is good manners. When you're a toddler and you get punched, you at least know what's going on. You turn around and screech, maybe fling a punch yourself, and then get back to playing nicely. And nobody expects a toddler to smile and be polite and pretend that they don't know what's going on when someone's stealing their cracker.

Adults, truth be told, really don't know much about playing nicely. Sometimes I wonder about trying to teach our kids to behave in certain ways that we, as individuals and as a society, can't manage ourselves.