The Best Life Lessons From Toddlers: Hasan Merali (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of pediatric emergency medicine physician Hasan Merali’s talk titled “The Best Life Lessons From Toddlers” at TEDxUofT 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Emergency Department Experience

HASAN MERALI: The emergency department can be a scary place, especially if you’re 2 years old. There are gross medicines that need to be swallowed, needles in your arms, and a constant stream of people coming in and out to check on you. And if you come in with severe belly pain, that can mean that you can’t eat for several hours while you await the results of an ultrasound and blood work. As a pediatric emergency medicine doctor, this is a process I go through on every shift. And I can tell you some of the most remarkable people I get to work with are toddlers.

Toddlers are special because of what happens when I go back in the room. Most of the time, I get to tell families that the ultrasound was normal and that their child can eat again. Parents are at the edge of their seat waiting with their child’s favorite snack, usually crackers. But somehow, just by looking at me, these little people are able to detect that I too have not eaten for several hours since I started my shift. And very often, with a smile, I’m offered the very first cracker out of the packet, if not the 3rd after it’s been licked.

Learning from Toddlers

For me, these are always heartwarming moments, but for toddlers, it’s just normal behavior. After years of having the privilege of working with these little people, I can tell you that we have a lot to learn from them. The term “terrible twos” completely mischaracterizes them. Toddlers spend much of their day playing, laughing, being nice to others and helping other people. Sure, we could probably teach them a thing or two, but the lessons we can learn from toddlers are profound.

And I hope to show you how thinking about and acting like a little bit more like a toddler can help improve your life. Toddlers are special because of how nice they are to others. They act kindly in a wide variety of situations, and it doesn’t matter to them who the other person is or how they’ve behaved. They act kindly to robots, to strangers, to animals. And even if the other person has acted selfishly or is antisocial, they’re still nice to that person.

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The Kindness of Toddlers

This was shown in a study from Spain where toddlers were paired with an unfamiliar adult. In this study, there were 2 levers. Pulling lever 1 would give only the person who pulled the lever a sticker, while pulling lever 2 would give both people a sticker. To test how toddlers would react, the adults in the study were instructed to repeatedly pull lever 1 and take all of the stickers for themselves. But then when toddlers have the opportunity, more often than not, they pulled lever 2 and shared.

As the authors of the study conclude, toddlers have a basic tendency to be nice to others, and not even repeated selfish behavior can erode this. What’s special about toddlers is the happiness they get from giving. In another study, toddlers were given a bowl of crackers and asked to share these with a puppet friend. Throughout the experiment, their facial expressions were recorded and analyzed for happiness. At another point in the experiment, the experimenter found some additional treats and gave these to the toddler and also asked them to share.

What the researchers found was that toddlers were more than happy to share. And importantly, they got most of their happiness from when they were able to give their own treats rather than the found ones. There’s something special about giving that toddlers have tapped into. Giving evokes a deep sense of happiness unlike a social media like or a purchase. Giving is tied to the reward system in our brains.

The Power of Childhood Memories

Unfortunately, according to the World Giving Index, only about a third of the world’s population gives to charity and less than a quarter volunteer their time. These numbers, however, are skewed negative as they only include adults. I am certain that if toddler measures of giving were also included, these numbers would be much higher. But there is something we can do to get back in that toddler mindset. In a very thoughtful and profound study, researchers wanted to see if there was a link between childhood memories and kindness.

They took 2 groups of adults and in the first group, they asked them to write down positive memories from childhood, while in the second group, they were instructed to write down memories from a recent trip to the grocery store as a control group. Afterwards, all the participants were asked to help with a different experiment. Amazingly, 50% more people in the childhood memory group wanted to help. The researchers then took this a step further with 2 different groups of adults. This time, they asked the 1st group to write down negative memories of childhood, while the 2nd group wrote down positive memories of their teenage years.

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Still, amazingly, those who wrote down negative memories from childhood were still more likely to help than those who wrote down positive memories from a different part of their life. There’s something special about thinking about our own childhood selves that activates generosity and kindness. We get a sense of moral purity, and the way we think about ourselves influences our behavior. I want you all to take a moment right now and think about childhood you. What were you feeling?

What were you doing? I see a lot of smiles. I hope you’ll continue to do that and write some of those thoughts down. That can get you back in the mindset of that little person who went around looking for people to help and living your best life.

Another thing toddlers do all of the time is play.

The Importance of Play

They play when they’re eating. They play when they’re exercising. And pretty much any activity they do can be turned into a game. If you ever walk by a playground and listen to a group of children playing, you get a sense of a deep type of joy that’s difficult for adults to get to on a day-to-day basis. But you can see if we were able to get a little bit closer to that point, how good it would be for us.

Play in adults has been shown to decrease stress. This was demonstrated in a study from early on in the COVID-19 pandemic where more playful adults were shown to be less stressed, and they were able to handle stress better. And aside from decreased stress, play can help increase creativity. Ask any grandparent, aunt, uncle what the best part of receiving a gift is for a toddler. Often, it’s the box it comes in.

Sure, the toy has flashy lights and makes fun noises, but the box can be any number of things, from a 3D mural for their paint set to part of a castle and beyond. And if we were able to think in a slightly more playful way, this could help us with our own creativity. A group of researchers from Sweden wanted to see what would happen if they made boring old meetings more fun. They took 18 different meeting groups, and all they did was halfway through the meeting, they put different objects on the meeting tables. In half of the groups, they put a bowl of fruit and some chocolate.

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And in the other half, they put one of several fun items, like a stick-on mustache or a foam dart gun. The meetings were left to continue. And at the end, when everything was analyzed, the researchers found that those who had the more playful items in their meetings had an increase in collaboration, an openness to new ideas and higher productivity. And this is something we can all do in our meetings to bring a little bit more fun into our lives. And finally, just like thinking about our own childhood selves can bring out kindness and generosity, the same is true for play.

Embracing Your Inner Child

In a study from North Dakota State University, undergraduate students were asked to imagine a scenario where classes were canceled for the day and they had to write down what they wanted to do. They had 2 groups of students, and the only difference was that the second group was asked to think as a child. The differences were stark. The first group, thinking as adults, focused on obligations, checking email, cleaning while the second group that were thinking as children wanted to visit friends and family, go to a pet store and, of course, play with everyone they saw that day. So the next time you have some time on the weekend or maybe in evening, think about what childhood you would do.

You might be surprised at all the fun things you think of. Terrible twos are not terrible. They are wonderful. Toddlers live happy and fulfilling lives, and we have a lot to learn from them. And you used to be one of them.

And thinking about and writing about that person can help you get some of those traits back. That kindhearted, fun-loving person who went around looking for people to help is not lost. They’re still there. They’re just in a slightly older and taller body. Go find them.

Thank you.