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The Slow Walk: What a Dad and His Toddler Taught Me About Patience
Published 8/9/26
I was sitting outside a coffee shop last week when I saw a dad across the street. Button-down white shirt, tie, laptop bag slung across his body. I could tell he had somewhere to be and was most definitely in a hurry.
Then I saw a little toddler come waddling out from behind him. He was taking his sweet time. Little steps, with a big pause between each one. They were moving at the toddler's pace, which was hardly moving at all.
The Sidewalk Crack
I could tell the dad was doing some mental math about where he was supposed to be, if he would make it on time at this pace; traffic at this time of day is already a nightmare….
He had somewhere to be, that much was obvious. And yet, he wasn't pulling the kid's hand. He wasn’t trying to rush him or do that silent parental hustle so many of us do without even meaning to. He was just walking at the toddler's speed.
And then the toddler completely stopped. He crouched down, and was all of a sudden deeply interested in a crack in the sidewalk. Dad stopped too. He didn’t even seem to sigh, or look at his watch, or anything. He put his hands in his pockets, bent over, and looked at the crack in the sidewalk like it was a perfectly reasonable thing to stop and spent 30 seconds looking at.
The Quiet Work of Patience
This is when I realized we don't really have a name for this kind of labor. It's not the work of planning or the remembering or the logistics of getting everyone fed and dressed and out the door. It's smaller than that, and somehow harder to notice and sometimes to even practice.
It's a decision made over and over to let a moment take as long as it takes. To not hurry the crack in the sidewalk. To not perform patience while secretly radiating stress, the way so many of us do when we're rushing but trying not to look like we're rushing.
Just real patience, on an afternoon that had every reason not to allow for it. It’s a kind of discipline most of us lose the second we're already running behind.
How Fast It All Goes
While watching them, I couldn't stop thinking about how short this particular season actually is. There's a very narrow window where a toddler's legs are that small, where a crack in the sidewalk is genuinely worth thirty uninterrupted seconds of investigation. Where the whole world still moves at the pace of someone figuring it out for the first time. And then one day, not too far from now, that same kid will be the one power-walking ahead, mildly annoyed that Dad is moving too slowly.
He'll miss this. Not because he wasn't paying attention but because that's just how it works. The very things that make toddlerhood exhausting, the slowness, the detours, the sidewalk cracks, are the exact things that quietly stop existing one day. And nobody tells you that it’s going to be the last time.
The Moments We Don't Want to Forget
I am sure whatever that dad was trying to rush to forgave the ten minutes he gave away to a crack in the sidewalk. Somewhere down the road, he's going to remember this afternoon or ones like it not as the day he was late, but as the day he wasn't in a hurry, even when he had every reason to be.
Maybe we can all let the sidewalk crack win more often. Because someday the walk won't be slow anymore. And we'll be the ones wishing, just once more, for two tiny feet to slow us down.
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