Why Toddlers Are Basically Tiny Project Managers

Nine Days, Two Kids, One Realization

I just spent nine days solo-parenting my two boys, Henry, age three, and William, age one. Laura was out of town, and while my parents helped a lot, the day-to-day was on me. No tag-team parenting. No “Can you grab that?” safety net. Just me, a diaper bag, a fridge full of fruit, and two tiny humans with wildly conflicting agendas.

And here’s what surprised me most:

I loved it.

Not the Instagram-version of loved it. Not “it was exhausting but rewarding” loved it. I mean actually loved it. The noise, the routines, the snacks, the messes, the moments that made zero sense but somehow made total sense to them.

Because by day three, a pattern emerged.

Every moment had an agenda. Every request had dependencies. Every decision came with a follow-up.

Every “no” triggered an urgent escalation, followed by a lengthy calming-down session with tears, more negotiations, and maybe a snack.

I’d fulfill requests, only to be told hours later to do it again… differently.

You'd think this would be hell. But as a software engineer, it all felt… familiar.

I was living inside an Agile sprint cycle.

(For the non-tech folks: Agile sprints are short, focused bursts of work—usually a week or two—with daily check-ins, shifting priorities, constant feedback loops, and no one really agreeing on what “done” means.)

I had loud stakeholders. Unclear requirements. Constant scope changes. Urgent bug reports. And daily stand-up meetings that started at 6:15am sharp.

And what looked like chaos was actually structure. Just not my structure.

Every meltdown, snack demand, and bedtime negotiation had a purpose. I just hadn’t been added to the Trello board.

But once I was, I saw it clearly:

I wasn’t living with tiny agents of chaos. I was working under two very intense, brutally honest, wildly inflexible project managers.

Toddlers and Gantt Charts (in Their Heads)

Toddlers have a plan. Always. But it’s rarely your plan.

Henry wakes up with a full internal schedule that nobody else was invited to.

7:00 a.m. - user declares need for cottage cheese.
7:03 a.m. - user changes mind, demands yogurt.
7:04 a.m. - user requests spoon, then insists on using fork.
7:06 a.m. - user adjourns meeting, meltdown optional.

From a grown-up perspective, this seems messy. But there’s a system under it. Toddlers are running miniature project schedules in their heads, full of dependencies, milestones, and risk management. They’re just terrible at stakeholder communication.

When Henry decides we have to go outside right now, it’s not random. It’s a deadline he didn’t tell me about. The window for “leaf observation and stick collection” has opened, and my failure to deliver resources (shoes, jacket, snacks) is causing a full-scale escalation.

William, meanwhile, is the junior project manager shadowing the senior. He observes, documents, and tests limits. He’ll push a light switch ten times, not because he’s bored, but because he’s stress-testing the system. He’s my QA department and he’s running A/B tests on my patience.

They iterate, pivot, and deploy faster than any engineering team I’ve ever worked with. You just have to accept that you’re not the scrum master here. You’re the support engineer trying to keep the system online.

Patching the Wrong Bugs

Before my nine-day parenting sprint, my default setting was resistance.

“No, we’re not doing that right now.”
“No, we don’t tease the dog.”
“No, we can’t take all the couch cushions off.”
“No, you may not paint the carpet with your poop.”

Every day felt like defending my house from a small, energetic insurgency. I thought being a parent meant holding the line, keeping order, setting rules, making sure nobody launched a yogurt pouch at the ceiling.

But somewhere around day four, after one too many battles over bedtime stories and toothbrush logistics, I cracked. Not in a bad way. In a clarity way. I realized the more I tried to “win,” the worse the day went.

I was treating parenthood like a control system—input, output, expected result—and my kids were constantly rewriting the code. I kept trying to patch the bugs, when really, the system was working as intended. They weren’t misbehaving; they were experimenting.

Once I stopped trying to impose my own roadmap and started reading theirs, things shifted. The tension went down, the laughter went up, and our days began to move in rhythm instead of resistance.

They didn’t need a manager. They needed a collaborator.

Living in Harmony With the Mini-Managers

So I switched tactics.

I stopped saying “no” so quickly.

I started treating their ideas as proposals instead of threats.

“Can we eat dinner in the living room?”
My old instinct: No, it’s too messy.
New approach: Yes… let’s make a picnic.

“Can I jump on the couch?”
Old instinct: No, absolutely not.
New approach: Fine, but it’s now called the Couch Gym. Ten jumps, then we close the gym for snack time.

It wasn’t that I suddenly became a pushover.

‍And for the record, we're still not painting the carpet with poop.

I just stopped assuming every request was an ambush. Once I started saying “yes” with purpose, they stopped pushing so hard.

Suddenly, our days flowed. They felt like teamwork instead of triage. Like we were finally operating from the same project plan.

Why Toddlers Would Crush Corporate Life

If toddlers worked in offices, they’d be unstoppable.

• They set clear priorities. (“Snacks first. Everything else later.”)
• They hold intense stand-up meetings. (“Dad! DAD! DAAAAD! Look what I did!”)
• They give direct feedback. (“This sandwich is wrong.”)
• They refuse scope creep. (“I said the blue cup, not the green cup.”)

They don’t overthink. They don’t schedule fake meetings to “circle back.” They act immediately. With passion. Often without approval from Legal.

Toddlers understand something most adults forget: clarity beats diplomacy. They don’t sugarcoat their needs, they don’t present requests in corporate jargon, and they don’t waste time “aligning on next steps.”

When they want something, you know it.

Every meltdown, every demand, every “no” is just an over-communicated version of the same truth: they care deeply about the project.

They’re just terrible at conveying it politely.

The Rhythm of Acceptance

As our time together went on, the days began to shift.

We still had meltdowns. We still had peanut butter on the toys and mysterious sticky zones on the floor.

But I stopped seeing those moments as failures. They weren’t bugs to fix; they were features of the build. The cost of doing business in toddler project management.

We’d found harmony. Not because I controlled everything, but because I stopped trying to.

What surprised me most was how quickly the shift changed my view of parenting solo. I found myself looking forward to each morning’s sprint planning meeting—also known as breakfast—when just days earlier, I’d been bracing for it.

When I told Laura about it later, she blinked. “You enjoyed solo-parenting for nine days?”

I did.

Well… maybe not all nine. But definitely seven or eight.

Once I stopped swimming against their current, I began to see what was underneath it. Their creativity. Their determination. Their oversized feelings. Their hilarious toddler logic.

The chaos didn’t vanish, but it stopped feeling like a problem to solve. It felt like proof of life.

When it came to my solo-parent sprint, the retrospective was clear: things went better the minute I stopped acting like the project manager and started following their lead.

Now, when I think about the next solo-parenting marathon—one I actually hope happens again—I don’t feel dread. I feel curiosity. Because being part of my boys’ project team doesn’t just make for easier days.

It makes for better ones.

The Takeaway

Parenting with Laura is always easier. We’ve built our own rhythm—a kind of choreography that keeps the whole operation running. She’s with the boys during the day, I tag in after work, and we trade off like shifts in a round-the-clock startup. She’s incredible at reading the boys, setting the tone, and keeping everything steady when it starts to tilt. We tackle the same job from different angles, and those nine days just made me appreciate how seamlessly her approach complements mine.

That rhythm is what made the solo stretch work. I wasn’t doing it alone. I was running a version of the system we created together.

And like any team, sometimes you need a break.

We love our kids. But damn.

So whether I’m flying solo or back in the groove with Laura, I’ll carry this with me:

Parenting isn’t about managing your kids. It’s about learning to work under them… to take their feedback, follow their priorities, and trust that their version of the roadmap might actually be better.

They don’t hold meetings in Outlook. They don’t track tickets in Jira.

But make no mistake: they’re running the show.

And if you’re willing to join the sprint, with tantrums, snacks, scope creep and all, you’ll find the work is meaningful.

They pull you out of efficiency mode and drop you right into presence.

They don’t care about your to-do list, your inbox, or whether the dishwasher is running.

They just want you to notice the jet contrail they found, or the MagnaTile parking garage they built, or how the peanut butter looks when you spread it “wrong.”

And that’s the magic.

Because once you stop trying to optimize it all, life gets richer. Messier. Funnier. And way more alive.

I went into those nine days hoping I’d survive.

I came out actually wanting more.

Not because it got easier.

But because I finally stopped trying to run the sprint...

And just became part of it.

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