6 Lessons Of Life, From A Toddler

A father accompanied his toddler son to the playground and came back learning these lessons for life.

- Sidharth Balachandran

I stood back and watched him lazily amble towards the centre of the large sandbox with his toys in tow. He briefly tripped on a large, stray pebble and immediately my “daddy” senses started to tingle. If I was Spiderman, I’d have shot out some of the miraculous web-like structure from my wrists and supported him. But alas, I’m a mere mortal and a slight gasp escaped my parted lips as I watched him stumble onto the playground pavement—bucket and all.

It took every ounce of mental prowess that I could muster to stop myself from running towards him. As any parent would be, I too was torn; after all, he was my son. And I was a duty-bound father who had sworn to protect him at any cost. But I didn’t move. Part of it was instinct and the curiosity to see how far he would go. Another part of it was the fact that I wanted to prove my wife wrong. You see, she always believed that I was a helicopter parent and that unless I let our son do certain things on his own, he would never learn. And while I vehemently voiced my displeasure at being boxed with such a tag, I knew it was true to some extent.

But li le did I know, that in my endeavour to show her that I could let go, my toddler would end up teaching me some important life lessons as he went about his playground adventures. Over the past two years, every time that I’ve accompanied my son to the playground, I’ve had the opportunity to see some of life’s greatest lessons being inadvertently demonstrated by these little ones.

Today, I’d like to share a few of them with you.

1 Friendships are simple, uncomplicated and come in all shapes and sizes