Toddlers

Autumn has found us.  Leaves are turning, fields are falling, and thus we once again find ourselves in the midst of a new American pastime:  the Federal Government Shut-Down Show-Down.  Although specifics may be a bit different by the time you read this column, very recently  ninety-year-old World War II veterans broke through security in order to visit their own memorial. 

Stay classy, D.C.  Stay classy.

Watching the two parties bicker back and forth is not tremendously different than watching my two children, four and two, fight over a crayon. They are both determined to use this crayon and this crayon only, despite the fact that its very existence was unknown to both of them moments prior.  What is nice about watching children fight over a crayon, though, is that they will most likely outgrow such behavior.  As the parent in the room, I could quickly remedy this situation, and, most importantly, they are merely fighting over a three-cent writing utensil.

When it comes to our federal government, though, there is clearly no parent in the room. No one is in charge, and we also have no good reason to believe these professionals will ever outgrow such antics.  These are adults, after all.  They wear dark, muted suits and sport triple-digit haircuts.  This is as good as they are going to get.  To make matters worse, instead of bickering over molded colored wax they are fighting over billions of our dollars that, technically speaking, they have not even seen.

With this in mind, it occurred to me that every so called “skill” a professional politician needs to know in order to stay employed has already been mastered by my two-year-old son, an individual who swallows most of his meals whole because he apparently does not have enough time in his day to chew.

Toddlers, for example, know how to spin a story, a crafty skill that frustrates ardent journalists and usually confuses the general public. When asked why he had colored on the playroom wall, for example, our son dodged the actual question and instead told us, “blue is my favorite color.”

            Which is true. He does like blue.  Who doesn’t?      That response did not really answer the question, though.  When our interrogation continued, he already had his talking points ready and was more than willing to leave us in the dust of his rhetorical nonsense.

            “We know blue is your favorite color.  But where are we supposed to color?”

            “Blue is cooool.”

            “Yeah, we get that.  Right, blue is cool.  I like blue, too, son, my shirt is even blue, but walls are not for coloring.  Where are we supposed to color?”

            “The sky is blue.”

            Eventually we gave up and made him watch us wash the wall, which was about as effective a deterrent as it sounds.  We then put an actual coloring book in front of him, which he did not want until his sister took an interest in it, and then the circle of life continued.

            Besides spinning their poor decisions, many politicians will simply deny any wrongdoing in the first place. This is also a skill in which most toddlers excel.  When asked if he needs his pants changed, he simply shakes his head.  If we press the issue and ask why he did not use the potty he will just look at us with considerable joy and say, “It’s OK to pee my pants.”

            It’s not, though, under most circumstances, and we’re trying to convince him of this.  We are trying to convince him that because he is able to use the potty half of the time, he should just go all out and use it the other half as well.

Despite these skills, though, recent events suggest that perhaps he won’t have much of a future in public office after all.

  He won’t lie.  In fact, sometimes he’ll turn himself in before even being questioned. 

            This is generally the case when he smacks his sister hard enough to make her cry.  Before she can even make it into the living room to tell on him, he’s already dashed down the hallway to announce, “I hit sissy!  I hit sissy!”

            He’ll apologize almost immediately and try to remedy the dilemma by hugging her between sobs, but the damage is done.  He has hit her, he has admitted to it, and now, as the parents, we have to administer consequences.

            “We don’t hit, son.  You know that.  Why did you hit sissy?”

            “I hit her in the head.”

            “Look at her.  You made her cry.  Are you going to hit her ever again?”

            He shrugs his shoulders, cocks his head and nods.  “She makes me mad I will hit.”

            This hurts her feelings even more, so her crying continues, and then he starts in with the waterworks once he’s forced into timeout.  Timeout does work, to a certain extent, as our son is very active and hates to sit still.  This consequence, though, is another example of how our elected officials differ slightly from our children.

            We do not discipline our representatives.  We do not scold our senators.  We whine about it, surely, but let’s face the facts.  Most of those “leaders” have remained in office through multiple election cycles. Why would their bad behavior change when they’re not reprimanded for it?  Like very small children, our leaders seem to make their decisions based on impulse, emotion, and even spite, as opposed to reason, compromise, and the greater good.  Until everyone eligible to vote begins to do a better job of parenting, we should not expect much maturing from our government.

            After all, even a toddler knows that when the diaper starts to stink, it’s time to get a new one.