Woman brilliantly explains why treating herself like a toddler completely changed her life: 'It's silly but it's helping'
A few routine things that were simple for us as kids, become somewhat complicated as adults. To combat that, a woman, u/RudeLifeguard1650, decided to treat herself like a toddler to see how it would affect her life. In this scenario, she is the toddler and her brain is the parent. She is happy to reveal that her little experiment had turned out to be quite "enjoyable." She shared exactly what she did and what changed in each aspect of her life with the Reddit community.
"A few months ago, I started treating myself like I would a toddler," the woman shared. She had seen some variations of the same online and pointed out that a person would have to treat themselves like an "actual toddler" who was in their care with this experiment. "You don't give kids anything and everything they want. McDonald's for dinner every night isn't looking after your inner child. It's neglect," the person suggested. She kept her fridge stocked with "classic kiddie food" instead. "Yogurts and fruits. Making sure I have vegetables on my plate, even if I don't want to eat them." She took herself to a library at least once a month and went for walks in the park.
At times, she spent her time coloring inside her house. "Sometimes, I even watch the shows I used to watch before bed, like 'Bear in the Big Blue House.' I also send myself off to bed at an earlier time now. No coffee or alcohol either." She admitted that a lot of it was just looking after oneself. "But switching it up to this mode makes it easier. Some things that are very obvious ways to care for children, I just stopped doing for myself. Like room to just relax." She added, "It's a bit silly, but it's helping." Many people shared their thoughts in the comments on how "re-parenting" oneself could work.
u/purplereuben wrote, "An important thing to note is that this requires a certain degree of knowledge of how good, kind parenting is done. For people who have not seen a good example of that, it can result in unintentionally making poor re-parenting choices." u/Fluffy-Tangerine-735 commented, "This is so big. It's how I got into Bluey, even though I don't have kids. It has been very helpful in being kinder to myself. I color, doodle and don't worry about judgments because I'm not very good. I just enjoy doing things I enjoy without any need for validation or a deeper purpose."
u/Ingfellow45 remarked, "I am absolutely so proud of you for doing this! What a good way to be in the world and thanks for sharing your story. People often need examples to live by, so well done!" u/orangelilyfairy shared, "This is a really good thing to do and I did this as well when I was working on healing my inner child. You just gotta know when it's truly, positively helpful and when it becomes too infantilizing, though. When I got mentally better and felt like my inner child was feeling less scared and more secure, there were some things I did that made me feel like, 'Babe, I'm a 30-ish-year-old lady, I don't need to watch this cartoon anymore to feel some kind of affection.' For me, watching cartoons and kids' shows was really healing (I don't know why). Maybe it's time to do some healing for my 'inner teen' now."