In the last couple of months, Kaia has become obsessed with menus at restaurants. When we sit down at a table, she will immediately grab one of our menus and prevent us from actually reading it. So oftentimes, we will have to share a menu between the two of us while she fusses with hers, flipping the pages (if it’s multiple pages) or thrashing it in the air. While eating at Grunske’s the other day, she was super attached to the menu. When the server came by to take them, she was still intently playing with it when the server removed it from her hands (with some resistance) and walked away. Pookster immediately had a melt down, crying with big fat tears streaming down her face. Yet out of nowhere, a nice woman came and gave Kaia her menu. She turned towards us with a sympathetic expression on her face.

“I can’t believe that mean server just took the menu away from you!” the woman said to Kaia. She then turned to us. “I mean, she was in the middle of reading her menu happily, and then she just grabbed it and took it away without any regard for her! She deserves to take as much time as she wants to read the menu! This age is just so precious and goes by so quickly! I hope you enjoy her as much as you can!”

It’s so true, though. Little kids at Kaia’s age have big feelings, and they don’t have all the words to verbally express themselves. We give them orders all day long, especially telling them they can’t do this, can’t touch that. We take things like menus at restaurants away from them without thinking they have any autonomy. From their perspective, it’s a LOT. This nice woman’s intervention made me think more about how having a toddler slows you down… and frankly, it should. We really should think more about their feelings and go at a slower pace for them to take everything in around them. It would probably benefit us all to slow down and stop going through life so quickly.