Parenting a toddler is a multi-year lesson in self-contradiction. After a half hour of imploring your child to please dear God, go play in the living room, the child finally does. And then you feel suspicious that it’s so quiet and you wonder what she’s doing.

Or that I forever want Bean to achieve focus and calm as she works out a problem, but then I interrupt her to tell her to put on shoes, it’s time to go to the market.

Part of this realization that I need to change my ways, is a realization that I need to stop interrupting her. I still treat her like a baby, where nothing she’s doing is of much value and therefore I don’t even think twice when I implore her to stop what she’s doing and do what I want her to do instead.

I’ve had to edit this in ways both big and small, and also make sure that I’m not going too far and giving her absolute reign over the household. It’s a constant balance, and until my new methods settle into something a bit more natural for me, it’s a constant struggle too to remind myself to cut it out.

This morning, Bean started picking at raisins in her oatmeal before I got a bib on her. Usually, I’d plop it over her head, no matter whatever else she was doing at the time (resulting in her arms flailing for a second as she looses track of where the raisin is in space aka contributing to The Toddler Chaos). Today, I stopped myself, and let her finish putting a raisin in her mouth before putting the bib on. It’s a small difference, I know, but it’s much less startling and rude.

Some mornings, I’ll want to get going when I see that she’s huddled over her art book, drawing pictures. If we don’t really have anywhere important to go, I’ve started reading or puttering around until she’s finished drawing, instead of interrupting her project and telling her to put shoes on. Of course, there are some mornings where we really do need to be somewhere, and I think it’s also good for her to learn that sometimes we can’t draw to our heart’s content, the world does not revolve around our desires.

And then there are the times that I’m just inserting myself where I don’t need to be. “Oh! Are you building a block tower!” “Did you draw Daddy a picture?” If she’s already paused to look at me, fine, we’re interacting like normal family members. But, if she’s bent over concentrating, I’m really just getting in her way, aren’t I? Just let the kid be, and be happy that she’s working quietly.

Once you start noticing how often you interrupt your toddler, it’s pretty striking. I can’t control her toddler tendencies, but I can surely control my own.