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We adults think we teach babies and toddlers all they need to know, but babies and toddlers teach us as much, if not more, than we teach them. Watching babies and toddlers makes us aware of things that we didn't know before, even when we were babies. One of these is letting go.
My granddaughter, Greta, when she was a little under 2 years old (a few months ago at the time of this writing), demonstrated something striking. Greta (not the baby shown in the photo) engaged in a behavior similar to the one shown in the picture. She was holding an object, a coin, in one hand. She had looked at the coin and played with it deliberately. At some point, however, she decided to play with some Lego blocks lying on the floor where she was sitting. She had played with the Legos many times before, happily pulling blocks apart or putting them together, always with two hands. This time, however, with one hand occupied, she proceeded to play with the Legos with just her one free hand.
The resulting activity was quite a struggle. Rather than dislodging Lego pieces from each other with deft two-hand pulls, and rather than joining Lego blocks with expert bimanual pushes, Greta struggled because she limited herself to the use of her one empty hand. The other hand, off to the side, was, apparently, out of sight and out of mind — a familiar concept in cognitive development but here, astonishingly, true of Greta's own extremity.
Greta most certainly did not limit herself consciously. She did not, as far as I could tell, decide to withdraw her coin-holding hand from her work space and then insist on keeping it locked around the coin. Instead, she seemed, quite literally, to forget that she had another hand. Even though she struggled with the Lego blocks, she failed to grasp how she could have made things easier for herself just by letting go.
My granddaughter is as bright as a button and always has been. Her inability to summon her occupied hand was not due to any sort of deficiency on her part. Instead, it was just a failure of attention, a failure to apply a principle of physical action that we adults take for granted: When you need two hands and one hand is occupied, then for goodness sake, let it go!
Of course, it may not be quite so simple. There might be advantages to persist in holding onto things if you are a baby or toddler. Think about our furry ancestors and, for that matter, our somewhat furry parents. It may be better for babies to cling tenaciously to their hairy moms and dads than to let go at the drop of a hat. Better to hold on than drop off. Perhaps it is better to be biased to cling than to release.
That said, it clearly makes sense to be able to let go when it is functionally profitable to do so. Being oblivious to the existence of a hand that can be used when two hands are needed is obviously maladaptive.
Another lesson can be learned from this simple observation. It is a lesson of a more general, spiritual kind. Not letting go can make things harder than necessary in weightier contexts. I refer to holding grudges. Maintaining wells of anger can become all too familiar. The resentment can sit there out of sight, out of mind, but if it continues to be in the background, it can be like the proverbial elephant in the room, a weighty, lurking presence. Letting go can be freeing. It can take some effort to do so, but doing so can be worth it. This is a lesson we can learn from babies and toddlers.
A post-script about this blog… In my book “Knowing Hands,” I talked about an earlier observation of another toddler holding something with one hand, causing him to have trouble completing a task he normally did with two. I also mentioned an observation described by a colleague whose toddler daughter struggled to climb a staircase she normally ascended quickly using her feet and both hands. She struggled because she was holding something with one hand and seemed unaware that she could simply let go of that object and climb the stairs more easily.
More systematic research on this topic should be done. Perhaps it will help us learn to let go in more ways than one.
