Motherhood, Animal Centered Design and the Arbitrariness of the Adult World

My son recently turned 14 months old. He’s walking, running, squatting, turning, reaching, touching, pulling, and throwing—you get the picture. He’s learning to move and exploring everything in the process.

What does this mean for me? A few things. First, it means I have to be on high alert, because a few seconds of distraction can lead to—let’s call them very interesting situations. Second, it means I’m constantly in awe as I watch him practice and master certain movements, like grasping a zipper or running up and down a small hill. Third, and what inspired this post, is how hard it can be to explain the “why” behind the arbitrariness of the adult world.

My son’s first word was “gol,” referring to a ball. Now, all spherical objects are “goles.” And when I say all, I mean honeydews, actual balls, circles on a page… In essence, he’s correct in creating this category and using it to organize the objects and images he sees. The challenge comes in explaining which “goles” are actual balls that he can interact with in one way—like kicking—and which ones, although essentially "goles," can be handled but not kicked, like a plum. Then, there are those that, despite their similar shape, shouldn’t be interacted with at all.

This reminded me of my time training service dogs, particularly when we taught puppies to fetch different items, like wooden spoons and dowels, yet expected them to ignore sticks when out for a walk. (You don’t want a working service dog lunging after sticks and potentially causing harm to their human.) At the time, likely because it was my first experience working with animals, I was a bit frustrated. To me, the distinction was clear—spoons and dowels existed in the training room, where we were learning, and walking outside was about movement. Why couldn’t my puppy understand this?

But that wasn’t the right question. A better one would have been: Why should he understand this? He was learning to fetch wooden objects, and sticks are wooden objects. He was, in fact, learning to fetch remarkably well. But to me, wooden objects existed in different contexts—some were okay to fetch, others weren’t. Why?

Fast forward a decade, and I find myself in a similar situation when trying to explain the different types of “goles” to my son. In my father’s living room, there’s a wire globe about the size of a basketball. Since he was tall enough to see it, my son has stood in front of the shelf, pointed, and said, “gol.” He wants me to get it for him, but I can’t, because it’s not really a ball. It’s a decorative object—meant to be looked at, rarely picked up or handled, and never treated as a ball. How do I explain this to him? What makes it even more challenging is that the same room contains actual balls he can play with and other spherical objects he can handle, but not kick, like for example a bowl of oranges.

Here lies the crux of the matter. Calling our world “human-centric” might actually be a misnomer because it’s almost always adult-human-centric. It’s filled with arbitrary rules created by adults, for adults, but applied to everyone, including children and animals. We expect them to learn certain behaviors, but those behaviors often come with many caveats—yes, fetch wooden objects here, but not there; yes, play with a ball that looks a certain way, but ignore another one that doesn’t.

After more than a decade of working in animal-centered design, I’ve learned to ask better questions that come from the perspective of the animal—or in this case, my toddler—rather than my own adult experience. Doing so makes raising him a joy, as it not only helps me quickly understand his worldview but also allows me to appreciate that while both dogs and babies eventually learn to navigate these nuances, it doesn’t make them any less arbitrary—or, at times, a little silly.