Have there been many major scientific studies looking at why children, and especially toddlers, have so much energy when they consume so little food? Where does it come from? Do they eat batteries?
There has to be a good explanation. And I know this isn’t a new question. It’s been debated for centuries, maybe longer. What drives them? Where do they draw the incredible flow of juice that lets them run about the house until they conk into a wall and knock themselves out?
There are plenty of ways to burn off that energy. One friend mentioned she’s taken up running her child in the backyard in the evening. I picture a little dog track, but instead of a plastic rabbit chase-toy, a dangling cookie or a bag of sugar.
I remember a night on the way home that my wife turned to me and said she was going to take our two-and-a-half-year-old outside and let her run wild in the sprinkler until she tired or completely pruned up.
But the thing is, especially when it comes to toddlers, there is no such thing as exhaustion. There is no such thing as “burning off” energy. It can’t be done. They have an endless supply, and the more they burn, the more they seem to have. It’s like they’re rechargeable. Or remember the movie, “The Blob?” The more it ate, the bigger it grew. Same thing, kind of. But how is that possible? Doesn’t that break some important law of physics? My daughter is defying the laws of physics!
She now runs around the dinner table, picking up speed and giving off high-pitched squawks as if she is a wild bird about to take flight. And I think to myself, “another lap or two and she’ll pass out on the floor.” But it never happens.
She is not a ravenous eater by any means, is the first to rise in the morning, and quite often is the last to bed. I get up to use the restroom in the middle of the night and fully expect to find her sitting there on the sofa watching late night television or ordering potato peelers off infomercials.
There is a possible answer: ice cream. Her new favorite is fudge twirl, which we call “swirl.” She pronounces it “squirrel” or something like “swuhl,” like a Brooklyn cabbie might say. There are constant demands for “swuhl,” and she eats about five bowls a night. (We truck it in by 55-gallon drum and she eats it from a large, suspended container similar to what gerbils drink water from.)
A serving (which is only 1/2-cup, and who only eats a half a cup?) has 130 calories and 15 grams of sugar. Shoot, that’s enough to power a small car.
Suddenly, it’s all starting to make sense.
So maybe the question is less about where they get it, or why they have so much of it. Instead, maybe the more important question — especially in these days of $4 gas and nauseatingly high energy prices — is how do we harness it? How do we tap into this renewable and endless well of free energy? Let’s get electricity out of these little buggers! Run them on a treadmill that powers the lights and the air conditioning. Put rechargeable batteries under their armpits. Let them pull us around in little rickshaws, rather than us lugging them around in strollers. “Son, I have a business meeting downtown. GO!”
Sure, cynics and naysayers will probably point to child labor laws, ethical considerations, and general bad parenting, but I think toddlers would love it, and we’d be helping the environment at the same time.
If she’s just going to run around the table 1,000 times, what’s wrong with hooking her up to some kind of homemade windmill contraption that generates a little power for the family? We have to burn off all that ice cream somehow, and might as well put all of that endless energy to good use.