Why Toddler Tantrums Are Actually Teaching You Something Beautiful

My two-year-old asked me for rice.

Not something rice-adjacent. Not a vague gesture toward the pantry that could have meant rice, or raisins, or I would like to emotionally destabilize you before bedtime. She said the word. Clearly. With intention.

Rice.

I was the kind of tired that makes cooking dinner feel less like a household task and more like a favor you're doing for everyone involved. Sleep-deprived, hungry, stretched thin, trying to keep up with four other things at once. But my little girl wanted rice.

So I made the rice.

Then — because I apparently still had a shred of ambition left in me — I made peas, put together a protein, and placed an actual balanced meal in front of her like the devoted, slightly delirious mother I am.

I set the plate down.

And that's when everything fell apart.

"I DON'T WANT RICE!"

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

I looked at the rice.

The rice, for the record, had done absolutely nothing wrong.

"I don't like rice! I don't like it! I don't like it!"

What made this something I could not get over was that exactly one day earlier, rice had been one of her favorite foods. Yesterday's beloved carbohydrate had become today's personal betrayal — delivered at full volume, with real feeling behind it.

And because I was running on very little sleep and apparently even less good judgment, I did the thing you should never do.

I tried to reason with a two-year-old.

"You love rice."

"I DON'T LIKE IT."

"You asked me for rice."

"I DON'T LIKE RICE."

"But I just made you rice."

"I. DON'T. LIKE. IT."

At some point my husband appeared in the doorway, assessed the situation, and decided there was strength in numbers.

"You like rice," he told her.

"I DON'T LIKE IT."

Excellent.

Two grown adults — with decades of combined education and life experience — completely taken down by a very small person who changed her mind about rice in less time than it took to cook it.

Why Toddler Tantrums Make Perfect Sense When You Think About It

This is not unusual in our house.

She is two.

Changing her mind is practically part of the job.

She wants to wear something until I try to put it on her. She desperately needs a particular toy until it's in her hands. She picks a snack, gets the snack, and sometimes looks at me like I've gotten the whole thing wrong.

And yes — toddler tantrums will test every bit of patience you have, especially when you're exhausted, especially when you're hungry, and especially when you just stood over a hot stove making the exact food that is now being rejected by the very person who asked for it.

There are moments in motherhood when I feel like I've got this. Calm. Present. Like I actually know what I'm doing.

And then there are moments when I'm standing in the kitchen saying "BUT YOU ASKED FOR RICE" as though I've finally landed on the argument that will make a two-year-old pause, look at me thoughtfully, and say: You know what, Mom? Fair point.

She did not say that.

But somewhere between my exhaustion and her very loud rejection of dinner, something shifted.

It became funny.

And then it became something more than funny.

Because honestly — are adults really that different?

We just tend to yell less about rice.

We convince ourselves we need an outfit, bring it home, try it on in our own mirror, and wonder what was happening in that dressing room. We become absolutely certain someone is exactly who we've been looking for — and then find out that what looked right from the outside doesn't feel right once we're actually in it. We chase jobs and houses and goals and versions of ourselves, certain that this one is going to be the thing that finally makes everything feel the way we imagined.

Sometimes we pray for something.

Work for it.

Wait for it.

Finally get it.

And then stand there, looking at the very thing we asked for, thinking...

Oh.

Maybe this isn't what I wanted after all.

There's something deeply human about that. We don't grow out of it. We just get quieter about it. We swap the screaming for silence and sort through the disappointment later, on our own, usually over something we didn't finish eating.

Sometimes Changing Your Mind Is Exactly How You Find What You Need

We put so much pressure on ourselves to know.

Know what we want. Know where we're going. Know which choice is the right one. Know whether this relationship, this job, this dream, this version of our life is going to be the thing we still want five years from now.

But sometimes we just can't know until the plate is sitting right in front of us.

Sometimes getting what we asked for is the only way to find out what we actually needed.

And maybe changing our minds isn't always indecisiveness or ingratitude. Maybe sometimes it's just information. Maybe it's growth. Maybe it's simply the long process of figuring out who you are — and that doesn't stop at any particular age. It just gets less loud.

My daughter is doing that right now, in the most honest way possible.

At two years old, she is learning that she can want something. She can choose something. She can change her mind. She can have a preference, a strong feeling, a second thought. She can say no to the rice she said yes to twenty minutes ago, and underneath all that noise, she is working out who she is — one dinner at a time.

She just hasn't learned the part where you say, "Actually, I think my feelings on rice have changed."

That part will come.

And I'm still learning things too.

I'm learning that I can't control every meal, every reaction, or every opinion that shifts inside this little person I'm raising. I'm learning that motherhood asks for patience at the exact moments I have the least of it. I'm learning that not everything needs to turn into a fight just because I worked hard for it — just because I made the rice.

And I'm learning that the little girl screaming across my kitchen isn't trying to make my life harder.

She's figuring out who she is.

One choice at a time.

One changed mind at a time.

One deeply offensive bowl of rice at a time.

Someday she'll look at me and say, "Mom, I changed my mind." Calmly. Clearly. No sound effects required. And someday — I already feel this somewhere — I'm going to miss the tiny voice that couldn't find those words yet. The one that just felt everything all the way and let it out.

Although, for the record?

I may not miss making the rice.

About the Author | Day 241 of 365

I'm a coach, a writer, an entrepreneur, and a mother — and lately, a short-order cook working for a customer who reserves the right to change her order after it has been fully prepared and plated.

For 241 days, I've been writing about the moments that make up a real life. Some of them are big — motherhood, grief, healing, heartbreak, love, starting over, the quiet ways we become someone different without quite noticing. And some of them start with rice.

Motherhood has a way of tucking something real inside the most ordinary moments. One minute you're tired, standing in your kitchen, trying to convince a toddler that she does in fact like the food she asked for. The next, you're watching her and realizing she's learning something huge — how to want, how to choose, how to say no, how to change her mind, and how to figure out who she is one small moment at a time.

And I'm right there figuring it out with her.

Maybe that's one of the strangest and sweetest things about raising a child. We spend so much time thinking we're teaching them. And then they turn around and show us something about being human that we'd forgotten we needed to hear.

Yesterday it was this:

You're allowed to change your mind.

Preferably before someone makes the rice.

Day 241 of 365. Let's do this.