Sarah King: Taking life lessons from a toddler

Toddlers are great teachers.

My son, Luca, does not care if the house is clean. All he cares about is running through the house, making mountains with pillows and drinking yogurt from a bowl with reckless abandon -- spilling loads of it all over the floor.

I’m a perfectionist. Chaos and messiness used to throw me into a fit of anxiety. Since becoming a mom, I’m now more interested in the look of joy on my boy’s face, opposed to keeping my house in perfect order.

When he goes to bed, I’ll straighten up for the next day (as usual), but there isn’t the urgency that was there before motherhood. Luca taught me how to live for the here and now. He taught me to enjoy the fun in each moment.

Luca also taught me to slow down. I now look around and trust myself as a mom. One of my son’s favorite activities is riding escalators. I discovered this during a trip to the Target at North Hills. He was so thrilled after riding down the escalator that we ended up riding them for 15 minutes.

In that moment, I thought I was being the most uncreative mom ever. Other moms were taking their kids to art classes or swim lessons and there I was riding the escalators and pretending it’s a ride at Six Flags. But what I have come to learn is that in doing simple stuff like this, I am teaching him to have fun in the everyday.

I’m also letting him explore his curiosity. We get out of the car to watch trains go by. We look at a construction sites and name the machines. These aren’t “cop-out” activities. They’re ways of slowing down and remembering that the world is super interesting!

Stop and look at the world as a toddler sees it. Everyone is going somewhere in their busy day! There are machines that can move the Earth! Planes that float in the sky! And there are huge animals that look so very different from what we see in the mirror!

Sure life with a toddler is messy and unpredictable. But it’s also colorful and fascinating. It’s easy for us moms to get wrapped up in the daily stresses. I still do. But my toddler has taught me, and continues to teach me, that the world is AMAZING in so many ways. Us moms just have to slow down and look around.

Sarah is the mom of one and the "mom" in MIX 101.5 WRAL-FM's morning show Two Men and a Mom.