The Toddler Survival Guide Read online

  THE

  TODDLER

  SURVIVAL GUIDE

  COMPLETE PROTECTION FROM THE WHINY UNFED

  MIKE & HEATHER SPOHR

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Preparing the Home for a Toddler Invasion

  Communicating with Your Toddler

  Feeding Your Toddler

  Grooming Your Toddler

  Socializing Your Toddler

  Venturing into Public

  Vacationing with a Toddler

  Surviving Bedtime and Potty Training

  Parental Self-Preservation

  Aftermath: Transitioning into Post-Toddler Life

  Index

  About the Authors

  INTRODUCTION

  Raising a toddler and surviving a zombie attack may not seem like very similar experiences, but they’re actually much more alike than you realize. Toddlers and zombies both communicate mainly through groans. They clumsily trail after you everywhere you go (even into the bathroom). And—upon entering your life—both zombies and toddlers will leave you frazzled, on edge, and deeply sleep deprived.

  If you’ve picked up this book it’s likely because you have, or will soon have, a toddler. We have some very bad news for you: the epidemic is worse than you realize. Today’s toddlers are far and away the most ill-behaved, unpredictable, and tantrum-prone toddlers in history. This isn’t to say historical toddlers didn’t have their unruly moments; they most definitely did, and we will touch upon them in this book. But it’s safe to say that if you left a modern toddler in a room with a dozen toddlers from the past, all of them would be crying within a matter of minutes except for the kid in the Frozen T-shirt.

  So, what happened to turn toddlers from mild irritants into adorable little nightmares capable of breaking a babysitter in less than twenty minutes? The cause of this seismic shift in behavior is one of the most hotly debated topics in the scientific community, with everything from global warming to fast food consumption to blame. As scientists race to determine the cause and find a cure, they are heartened by the fact that (at least for now) this abhorrent behavior is limited to toddlerhood. (Should it extend by years into the future, it could spell doom for all of humankind.)

  Until that dark day, however, the biggest problem caused by this behavioral scourge is that it has made living with toddlers incredibly difficult. The Toddler Survival Guide is a handbook to help you survive these challenging times. We saw the need for such a book as we have not only survived these trying years ourselves, we work day in and day out with the parents of toddlers. For more than a decade, we have studied toddlers up-close in their natural habitat.

  This book will cover survivor skills including how you can outfit your home to outlast a toddler occupation (baby gate, cabinet locks, wine), how you can subdue an angry toddler (“Elmo’s Song,” mac and cheese, smartphone), and even how you can safely venture into public together without your toddler (or you) bursting into tears. It is our hope that from these pages you will learn the skills, tools, and mindset needed to successfully handle any encounter with a toddler. We also hope that upon reaching the conclusion of this book you will feel confident enough to stand up and shout, “I will not be a victim of my toddler! I will survive!” (Or at the very least, you will know you’re not alone out there.)

  There is also a light at the end of the tunnel. Whenever the prospect of living two or more years with a toddler becomes too much to bear, keep in mind that if you can endure it, your child will transition into the comparatively serene (though still somewhat infuriating) preschool years. So, what do you say? Do you have the courage to meet the toddler invasion head on?

  CHAPTER 1

  PREPARING THE HOME FOR A TODDLER INVASION

  There’s no avoiding it: your baby will soon turn into a full-fledged, card-carrying toddler. When this happens, the nice, well-kept home you’re so proud of (or perhaps the somewhat messy one that embarrasses you when company unexpectedly drops by) will be a thing of the past. Your home will become a war zone, and like all war zones, it won’t be pretty.

  You can bar the windows and shut the doors, but it won’t do any good. Your toddler will always be right there beside you… the screams will be coming from inside the house! If you’re to have any hope whatsoever of getting to the other side of toddlerhood without seeing your home take a serious dip in value (or without surrendering your deposit) you will need to ready your home as if you were—you guessed it—preparing for war.

  ACCEPTING THE NEW NORMAL

  You may think you’re prepared for what it will be like to have a toddler in the home because you’ve spent the previous year or so living with a baby, but make no mistake: a baby is not a toddler. Babies are all but immobile for their first several months, and even when they do start crawling, they remain low to the ground. Toddlers, on the other hand, are able to wreak havoc vertically and with velociraptor-like speed. Not only that, but whereas babies spend most of their time thinking about little more than eating, sleeping, and relieving themselves, toddlers can imagine all sorts of mischief but without any of the impulse control that stops older children from doing the especially ill-advised. For these reasons and hundreds more, you must adapt your home to the presence of a toddler. We simply cannot emphasize enough how grave a mistake it would be for you to try to keep things status quo once you have a toddler in your midst. Still don’t believe us? Perhaps the testimonials of these parents will change your mind:

  “Before I became a mother I was very proud of the fact my friends described my home as ‘Straight out of Architectural Digest.’ I certainly had no intention of redecorating it just because I was pregnant. I was not going to become one of those parents who had toys strewn about and beanbags in the living room. Gag! My home continued to impress after the birth of my son, Alistair, but then one day something about Alistair… changed. I took him to the pediatrician, who broke the bad news to me: Alistair had become a toddler. That night he ran into the entryway and knocked over my replica statue of David, breaking off its little penis, then swiped a jar of Nutella from the cupboard and used it to finger-paint on my $5,000 Persian rug. It’s now nine months later and I have beanbags in every room.”

  —Amy V., Connecticut

  “It used to be that if there were a party, it was at my house. I hosted every wedding shower, every girls’ brunch, every Oscars party—everything! My mom told me I would have to start letting my friends host the parties once my daughter, Angie, became a toddler, but I didn’t listen. Instead, I planned an epic wedding shower for seventy-five guests. Two minutes before guests started arriving I discovered Angie sitting on the cake I’d commissioned for the event, scooping up the frosting with her dirty little fingers. Later, the guest of honor found a long-lost sippy under the couch that still had milk in it and—upon opening it and taking a whiff—threw up all over the giant bowl of Caesar salad I’d just brought out. Now I only throw parties at my friend Chuck’s place (okay, Chuck E. Cheese’s).”

  —Tamia R., Michigan

  “I used to roll my eyes when people said I needed to babyproof my home and think, ‘What a waste of time! My mother never babyproofed and I’m still here, aren’t I?’ Sadly, my refusal to babyproof lead to three costly trips to the emergency room—all for me! Once, because I didn’t have a baby gate, I had to dive to stop my toddler, Dylan, from running out of the room and tore my ACL. Another time Dylan and I were playing on the floor when I hit my forehead on the corner of the coffee table and needed twelve stitches. Lastly, I stuck my finger into an outlet and got electrocuted. That one had nothing to do with Dylan—I’d just had too many beers and wondered what would happen—but I sure wish I’d put one of those covers on the outlet.”


  —Doug M., Oregon

  As you can see, the longer you delude yourself that having a toddler won’t change your life, the worse things will be for you. Simply put, you must accept the new normal (which is anything but) if you hope to keep your home from falling into condemnable condition.

  PROTECTING YOUR HOME

  Simply accepting your new normal isn’t enough. You also must develop a tactical strategy, and fast. To get an idea of the strain and pressure your home will be under, it’s a good idea to re-watch Poltergeist, especially the last twenty minutes. The key difference is that, while the damage done to the home in Poltergeist was the handiwork of thousands of angry spirits, the damage soon to be done to your home will come courtesy of a single toddler.

  The most vulnerable part of your home will be your walls. It doesn’t matter how many coloring books or art pads you buy your toddler, she is not going to be content to contain her scribbling in them. Toddlers are like tiny Banksys who want their work to be seen on the biggest canvas possible, and in your home that canvas is your walls. As if that weren’t bad enough, your toddler will have an uncanny ability to “express” herself at the most inopportune times possible.

  Taking care of some last-minute cleaning before your easily offended great aunt comes to visit? Your toddler will likely use that time to draw a giant butt on the entryway wall—something your great aunt won’t appreciate no matter how tastefully it’s done. Similarly, if you get a phone call or accidentally doze off on the couch, you can be sure your toddler will exploit this momentary lapse in supervision by busting out her crayons.

  Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to curb your toddler’s drive to draw on the walls. Some parents attempt to discipline their toddlers by making them clean the marks off the walls themselves, but standing there waiting for your toddler to “clean” something is more of a punishment for you than for your toddler. Instead, make a steadfast rule that your toddler is never to use crayons or markers unsupervised, and always collect them the moment she’s finished. Basically, the more you think of yourself as a prison guard, the better. Just as prisoners aren’t allowed to take utensils out of the cafeteria, your toddler shouldn’t be allowed to take crayons out of the family room. You need to remain on high alert, too, because toddlers will scheme to get their hands on contraband just as fervently as a prisoner will. Toddlers, for example, have been known to mule a crayon back from a restaurant and do damage with it later at home. You should also do regular inspections of your home. If you don’t, and your toddler finds a half crayon under the couch, you will regret it later.

  You can remove toddler-made markings from walls using hair spray, warm water, and a rag.

  Another area toddlers can shockingly damage is the bathroom. While toddlers generally resist potty training and want to spend as little time as possible in the bathroom for its intended purpose, they love to just hang out in there for fun. This is not only gross, but sure to end poorly for your bathroom. For example, if you leave a tampon out, your toddler will flush it down the toilet (requiring a very expensive visit from the plumber). She will also pull on the cabinet knobs until they come off and leave the faucet water running (which could end up being every bit as expensive as the visit from plumber in the long run). To limit potential damage, be sure to put any items your toddler could do mischief with (like tampons and plungers) out of her reach, and make a firm rule that she is never allowed in the bathroom by herself.

  The rest of the home is not immune to your toddler, of course. While the many ways she could end up damaging your home are too vast to fully catalogue, they nonetheless include turning a light switch on and off until the fuse blows, putting impossible-to-peel-off stickers on your hardwood floors, and cramming fruit snacks into your locks. To combat these attacks, it is wise to always remain on high alert, and to always try to stay one step ahead of your toddler.

  HEADING OUTSIDE

  Considering all of the damage a toddler can do to the inside of your home, we forgive you for thinking, “I know! I’ll just keep my toddler outside all day and only bring her inside for diaper changes, naps, and bedtime!” The problem with this plan (besides requiring you to be outside all day too) is that toddlers can also do plenty of damage to the outside of your home.

  The good news is that if your home rests on a dirt plot that is totally devoid of landscaping, your toddler won’t be able to do quite as much devastation (the bad news is that everyone on your street will almost certainly hate you for lowering their resale values). However, if you have landscaping or a garden, you’re in for a whole lot of trouble. That’s because your toddler won’t take into account how expensive the flowers are or how many hours you spent planting them. All she will think upon seeing them is, “Ooh! Pretty!” or “I want to give these flowers to my dolls!” or even “I’m going to pretend I’m Godzilla and stomp through this garden like it’s Tokyo!” So, unless you want every flower in your yard picked or flattened in a shockingly short amount of time, you should always stay within a three-second dash of your toddler when outside.

  Flowers are by no means the only thing your toddler will destroy. She will also break pots, lawn gnomes, pink flamingos, birdhouses, doghouses, sundials, Greek statues, and basically anything else you enjoy having in your yard. Again, staying close to your toddler at all times is the only way to stop these atrocities from happening.

  RECORDED TODDLER DYSFUNCTION THROUGHOUT HISTORY

  In 1940, a French teen stumbled upon the entrance to the Lascaux Cave. Upon exploring the interior, archaeologists found nearly two thousand cave paintings that dated back more than seventeen thousand years. This entry is from the notes of archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil:

  “NOVEMBER 17, 1940

  A very curious thing happened today as we moved into a chamber some eighty meters from the entrance. The paintings, which until that point were primarily depictions of large animals, suddenly gave way to a series featuring human figures. At the center of these paintings was what appeared to be a prehistoric child of three or so. In one painting, the child was seized by a fit of anger so disruptive that it alerted an angry rhinoceros to his family’s location. In another, the child refused to eat a piece of meat that his exhausted mother had prepared over the fire. In yet another painting, the child could be seen scribbling on the cave walls to his father’s horror. Indeed, many of the walls in the area still bear visible defacement in the scrawl of a small child—perhaps the very child depicted in the paintings.”

  Lastly, you must always check your toddler’s feet, hands, and pockets before letting her back inside. Fail to do this and she might not only trail dirt all over your rugs, but also bring a wide variety of bugs, insects, and lizards (or as she will refer to them, “pets”) inside. To avoid nearly having a heart attack a week or so later when a lizard runs across your foot, take a cue from Australia. They’re incredibly strict about what creatures they let into their country, and you should be too.

  PROTECTING YOUR STUFF

  The good news is that your toddler probably won’t completely destroy your home to the point where it’s unsalvageable. The bad news is that it’s a totally different story when it comes to your stuff. John Lennon sang, “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can.” You’ll find imagining no possessions pretty easy when you have a toddler because most of your stuff is broken anyways. To avoid having to conduct a funeral for your favorite things every week, you’d better start preparing to go head-to-head with your toddler now.

  There are two kinds of possessions you will have to safeguard against your toddler: those you can put away and out of reach, and those you will have no choice but to leave exposed to your toddler. In theory, the things you can put away and out of reach are the easiest to keep safe, but to do that takes some serious discipline. Let’s pretend, for example, that your greatest passion in life—outside of your partner and monstrous little toddler—is playing the ukulele. You can’t go a day without strumming your priceless, han
dmade uke (signed by the late, great Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo‘ole, no less!) without feeling a little shaky. You need to play that little wood box, but the sad truth is that if you truly care about it you will stash it on the top shelf of your closet and forget about it until your toddler is older. “Put it away for years?” you’re thinking. “That’s impossible!” Maybe. But if you don’t, the odds are you will accidentally leave it out one day, and when you do, your toddler will use it to do her best Kurt Cobain impression, complete with the guitar smash at the end.

  Make a concerted effort to limit how much you let your toddler use your phone (if at all). This will limit the chances of her dropping it into the toilet, smashing its screen, or texting gibberish to your boss.

  The second kind of possessions—the ones you can’t safeguard from your toddler—are much harder to protect. Your couch, for example, is going to be directly in the line of fire (unless you decide to throw a plastic cover over it like you’re a senior citizen living in Boca Raton). You can and should do your best to keep the couch clean by banning your toddler from consuming food and drinks on it, but eventually your toddler will: A) have an “accident” on it, B) knock over the coffee you were dumb enough to perch on its arm, C) leave chocolate-covered fingerprints on every cushion, D) use a ballpoint pen to draw an agonizingly large portrait of Sofia the First, or E) all of the above plus a whole lot more. Spoiler alert: the answer is “E.” Are you cringing at the thought of your couch looking like it spent a generation in a fraternity’s game room? Well, you’ll also have to get used to the idea of your toddler hurling a block at your flat screen (leaving a permanent streak across it), spilling juice on your computer (frying it for good), and leaving toy cars out to get sucked up into your vacuum.