The Surprising Reason Toddlers Always Say ‘No'

Yahoo

24-06-2025

A mom who moved mountains to entertain her toddler got an adorably serious answer when she asked him, 'Did you have fun?'
'It was too stinking cute,' Samantha Afran, a mother in Florida, tells TODAY.com.
Afran, a part-time content creator, shared a TikTok clip of the conversation with her 21-month-old son, Ezra, after visiting the children's museum. The mom, who works at a marketing company from home, had restructured her meetings to squeeze in the bonding time before Ezra's nap.
'POV: You arranged your entire day to take your toddler to that place they've been begging to go,' Afran wrote on the video of her carrying Ezra from the museum to the parking lot.
When she asked him the simple question, Ezra had an immediate response: 'No.'
'My bad for catering to your every whim,' Afran jokingly captioned the video.
Commenters on Afran's video could relate:
'Literally, my daughter.'
'Went to the arcade and the movies and Build-A-Bear, unfazed. Meanwhile, I drove home from daycare with the windows down once and he screamed, 'Woo-hoo, best day ever!' the whole time.'
'Mine will say, 'Yes, but we didn't get to do this one thing and now it's ruined.' Went to Disney World but 'Mission: Space' was closed. It is the only thing my son would talk about.'
'Haha, that is so real.'
'Spent two hours at the children's museum and I asked my 4 year old this when we got back in the car. He said, 'Fun doing what?''
'My toddler says 'No' to everything. 'Did you have a good day?' 'No.' 'Do you love Mama?' 'No.' 'Do you like the chips you're currently eating?' 'No.' OK, bud.'
'My kid does the opposite: 'I had so much fun camping, Mommy!' when in fact, she cried the entire time we were camping.'
Afran tells TODAY.com that she loved her son's 'Deadpan delivery, lack of hesitation ... and comedic timing.'
'Toddlers don't have the same sense of time that adults do,' Deborah Gilboa, a family doctor and resilience expert, tells TODAY.com. 'They don't look backward — they're very existential, Zen-like little creatures ... I don't mean 'calm,' but they feel however they feel right that second.'
So, when you ask a toddler in the parking lot, 'Did you have fun?' don't expect a logical reply.
'We, as adults, and even children older than 4 or 5, can look back in time and compare experiences to come up with a qualitative judgment — but toddlers absolutely cannot,' says Gilboa. If toddlers are hungry, hot, cold, excited, you'll hear about it immediately.
Adds Gilboa: 'You cannot ask them to go back, even 10 or 15 minutes, and expect a cogent answer about how they were feeling compared to other experiences they've had.'
Sometimes toddlers complain about something in the moment only to rave about it later.
'What they're saying is, 'I liked spending time with you and I want to do it again,'' says Gilboa.
Afran says her son is going through a 'no phase' (even when he means 'yes') and that next time, she'll point out the 'fun' as it happens.
She is also not offended by her toddler's candor.
'If you're being a good parent,' says Afran, 'Your ego will probably get bruised!'
This article was originally published on TODAY.com