Everything I Need to Know I Learned as a Toddler

Take that, those of you who didn’t learn stuff until kindergarten! Every parent knows that kids are constantly learning… shapes, colors, body parts. The game “Where is your nose?” and “Where is Mommy’s nose?” is the pointing game that we play until just about every acceptable body part has been identified by name and touched by a somewhat uncertain index finger. My kids are grown, so I have to play this game with other people’s kids now… and I’ve learned that I’m probably not supposed to ask them “Where is your uvula?” and teach them to put a finger down their throat until they gag. Personally, I think this is funny as hell, but today’s parents apparently don’t have a sense of humor.

So what life lessons come from toddlerhood that we need every day? To be a productive adult in society there are some key things we pointed to as kids that we need to redefine to make our dialog with others work. It all has to do with how people learn and how we teach them what we want them to know: visual, auditory, tactile, and speech.

Eyes – Most people are visual learners in one way or another. We appeal to their visual senses when we diagram how something is to be done. There is a dialog that happens only with our eyes as others show us pictures, diagrams and things that demonstrate their ideas. Failing to see or to understand what must be seen kills communication before it starts

Ears – Listening does not mean that we pause the conversation long enough to think about our next words. It means carefully absorbing not only the words from the mouths of others, but also to learn how to comprehend the meaning of those words. We take aural input into our ears, but in a sense we put on the message like a coat and wear it. Misunderstandings are ill fitting messages.

Fingers – The pointy things at the end of our hands are useful to draw pictures in the air, a tool for gesturing and emphasizing important ideas, but more importantly they are the input device for most electronic media. It is not an accident that verbal agreements are concluded with a handshake because the touch of another hand is a very personal message.

Mouth – Not only is this the gateway to the uvula (sorry… had to) this is the output device to others for their input as auditory messaging. The use of vocabulary and words in general give our actions meaning. Interestingly we rarely can endure the absence of the spoken word for any length of time. Silence prompts us to say something to keep conversation alive.

It was never intended that we simply stop with identifying our tools for communication. Soon after we learn to use our eyes, ears, and fingers, we augment the way we interact with others through language. Interfering with any one of these gateways to others makes us cease to act like we are alive. We need these tools to be human.

 
Image credit: elinamanninen / 123RF Stock Photo