You're Not Being Chased by a Bear — On Slowing Down and Making It Fun
What happens when you take a breath, stop reacting, and decide to make it a game instead. Spoiler: it usually works better and faster.
I had a moment recently that I keep coming back to. I was getting dressed and both kids came barreling into my room — touching everything, climbing on things, doing exactly what toddlers do — and I felt myself start to bark. Get out. Stop touching that. I said no.
I caught myself. Took a breath. And instead of the bark, what came out was a song — completely improvised, to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It":
Let's get out, let's get out, let's get out — it's time to find our shoes, get our coat, and go outside—
My oldest — who has been slow to develop speech, which makes every new word feel like a gift — started singing along. Go out. Go out. Happily. Excitedly. Moving toward the door on his own because it was a game now, not a command.
We were out the door faster than we would have been if I'd spent five minutes fighting about it. And I felt completely different than I would have felt after a power struggle. So did he.
What they're actually asking for
Here's the thing I have to remind myself on the hard days: when my kids are loud, clingy, getting into everything, and demanding my attention at the exact worst moment — they are not trying to ruin my day. They are asking for me. Specifically, directly, in the only language they fully have: their bodies and their presence.
I know this. I know that toddler behavior is developmentally appropriate, that big feelings and boundary-testing and needing constant proximity are exactly what's supposed to be happening right now. I have an early childhood background. I've read the research. I understand it intellectually.
And I still lose my patience. Because knowing something and living it in a moment when you're touched out and talked out and trying to make dinner are two very different things.
The dinner time chaos and the sacrificial potato
Dinner is peak chaos hour in our house. I'm at the stove, they're in the other room, and if I go too long without checking in, things escalate fast. The yelling starts. Then my oldest starts headbutting his brother off the couch, or using his blocks in ways blocks were not intended to be used. Chaos ensues.
What I've found works — genuinely, consistently works — is narrating and including instead of redirecting and excluding.
I start talking out loud about what I'm doing. "I'm cutting the onion now — can you smell that? That's what makes people cry but it tastes so good in soup." I give my oldest a real job — he loves to peel onions, loves to chop something (usually a vegetable I've decided we don't actually need — the sacrificial potato, I call it). He feels the wood knife, feels the resistance, watches something change because of his hands. He is in it with me and that's all he ever wanted.
My youngest sits in his chair with a piece of Tupperware to chew on, maybe some ice, maybe a cold carrot — which has been amazing for teething. He can see me. I can see him. He is content.
Dinner still gets made. Usually faster than when I was trying to do it while also managing the fallout from not including them.
The kids aren't interrupting dinner. They are dinner. They're part of it. And the moment I stopped trying to keep them out of my space and started pulling them into it, the whole dynamic changed.
Practical ways to make the moment a game
This isn't about being a perfect, endlessly patient, Pinterest-mom version of yourself. It's about having a few tools in your back pocket for the moments when you feel the bark coming and want to choose something different.
- Any transition can become a song. Getting shoes on, leaving a room, coming to the table, starting a task. Improvise the tune, use their name, make it silly.
- It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be different from a command. The novelty alone breaks the tension.
- For kids with developing speech, songs are magic — the rhythm and repetition make words accessible in a way that regular speech sometimes doesn't. My oldest will sing words he won't yet say.
- Give them a real job — peeling garlic, washing vegetables, tearing lettuce, stirring something cold. Real tasks with real sensory feedback.
- The sacrificial vegetable — hand them something to "chop" with a butter knife or just their hands. It doesn't have to go in the meal. The point is the experience.
- Tupperware station — a cabinet or drawer of safe kitchen items they're allowed to pull out and play with. Wooden spoons, plastic containers, measuring cups. Instant independent play while you cook.
- Narrate out loud — describe what you're doing, what it smells like, what's going to happen next. You're not just cooking, you're building vocabulary and keeping them connected to you at the same time.
- When energy is high and you're trying to get somewhere, make the transition itself the activity. Race to the door. Hop like frogs to the car. Stomp like dinosaurs to the bedroom.
- The destination is the same. The journey is just louder and more fun.
- For toddlers who need movement to regulate (see: proprioception and vestibular input), this isn't just fun — it's genuinely helping their nervous system get what it needs to cooperate.
This is their childhood
I think about this a lot. The way I respond in these small, ordinary, frustrating moments — getting dressed, making dinner, trying to leave the house — is the texture of their childhood. Not the big trips or the special occasions. This. The Tuesday afternoon in the kitchen. The morning routine when everyone is tired. The moment I chose to sing instead of bark.
That doesn't mean I get it right every time. I don't. There are days where the bark wins, where patience runs out entirely, where I'm just surviving. That's real and it's allowed and I'm not here to make anyone feel worse about the hard days.
But I've noticed that on the days when I manage to slow down — when I catch the breath before the reaction, when I make it a game instead of a battle — I feel better too. Not just them. Me. There's something about choosing playfulness over control that lifts a weight I didn't know I was carrying.
We are not being chased by a bear. The dishes can wait. The to-do list will still be there. This moment — right now, this small chaotic ordinary moment — is the one that counts.
— Micaela, Founder of Chaotic Connections
If you're reading this on a day where you didn't slow down, where the bark won, where you said something you wish you hadn't — that's okay. Repair is possible. A simple "I'm sorry I got frustrated, I love you" goes further than you think with little kids. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to keep trying.
Keep little hands busy while you get things done
Low-prep printables that toddlers can do independently — or alongside you at the kitchen table while dinner happens. Because everyone wins when they have something to do.