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Lorraine
EricaSomebody has stolen my cherubic 2-year-old. OK, to be honest he wasn’t a cherub—he has always been challenging in ways my daughter never was. Life was so easy with only one child, particularly with Pickle, the ‘easy’ baby—but Bowser was a painfully cute, sweet, if regularly naughty little munchkin. Then overnight someone came in and swapped him for a demon child. I can’t find 666 on his head, but he’s suddenly possessed. He is awkward and his ability to make life difficult for himself and me is quite astounding. He spends most of his time telling me ad nauseam what he doesn’t want to do, play with, eat, or drink.
Yesterday morning as I was making Pickle’s packed lunch he stood beside me torturing himself over his morning milk:
Bowser: “Don’t want my milk”
Me: “OK, that’s fine; you don’t have to have it”
Bowser: *Whimper*
repeat 15 times
Bowser: “I want my milk”
Me: “OK you can have it, just say please”
Bowser: “Don’t want my milk”.
The bread is now being buttered with a little more vigor as I grit my teeth and try to remain civil through this thoroughly annoying conversation. He has become ridiculously stubborn. It took him the best part of an hour to finally say please for his milk and I know how much he loves his milk.
He bursts into tears at the smallest, silliest thing like not wanting to play with a particular car, or not having a clean page of a notebook to scribble on. Where has all this anger, frustration and contrary behavior welled up from?
I’m finding it really hard to pick a game plan to deal with this new challenging behavior, which I can only assume is the onset of the ‘Terrible Twos’ – right on cue. I know I need to be consistent, but I flip-flop between pretending it’s not happening by ignoring him and hoping he’ll soon realize his plan of attack is not working (while gritting my teeth to stop myself from bawling and shouting at him) and being extra nice to him while he works through these confusing feelings. However, my worry with this second strategy is that he’ll stick with the tantrums leaving me as a ‘yes-dear’ mommy pandering to a kid who always gets his own way and is thoroughly spoiled. For now the distraction tactic is my number one go to, although “Just Nothin’” is his infuriating standard response to my vain attempts to find out what he would like to play with.
If only he’d realize he’s creating so much trouble, tears and unpleasantness for himself—we’d be much better off back with his previous less devilish incarnation. But just how do you explain this to a 2-year-old?
Filed under: Parenting Tagged: | behaviour, Family, Motherhood, new mom, new mom dilema, Parenting, rookie mom, tantrum, terrible twos, toddler
My son has just entered the terrible 2′s except his thing is physically throwing himself around when he doesn’t get his way, scream, kick and what I call “fake whining”. It can be frustrating because they can’t express themselves the way an older sibling can and two is the age they test and test…I try to be persistant in letting him know that behaviour is unacceptable, ignoring to an extent can help too. It’s hard but we love them..good luck, I know I need it too some days
This is a great post! It had me smiling, relating and unscrunching my brow (as I have been dealing with the “terrible 3s” all day today)! All that happens when they turn 3, is they they get more sophisticated in their unreasonalbe demands. The funny thing is, as much unhappiness they are creating for themselves, they forget about when it is over. These episodes are enough to have mom’s teeth clenched and shoulders up to her ears all day! Don’t you wish we could recover from the tantrums as quickly as they can???? Those little buggers causing so much drama, the nerve!
Oh lord. I feel your pain, sister. My 2yo has begun the horrific fake crying and spontaneous combustion. It is enough to make a Mama loser her cool. Doing my best not to shout in frustration.
2 -year molars? Yeah, it doesn’t end. My 5 year old is still a VERY stubborn and moody kind of kid. Very sensitive. But, we started seeing that trend at 1. We had terrible ones, threes and sort of now…fives! Maybe it is just teething, if you’re lucky.
Good luck!