The temper tantrum. The strop. The tizz. The meltdown, hissy fit… call it what you want. It’s entered my world in full force in the last two weeks. And I hate it.
The terrible twos are fairly new to me. The Toddler has been two for three weeks. He’s a fairly advanced boy and has quietly hit milestones ‘early’. His birthday fell in the Easter Holidays and so I was fortunate to see him grow and fill his Toddler boots up on home time – school holidays always seems to see a bit of a growth spurt in him. He talks more. He seems taller. And so I watched him approach his second year milestone with a hopeful wish of the terrible twos being a myth.
They’re not. They’re a real thing. And they’re shit. Like, full on shit.
Moms must always feel like they’re doing a rubbish job. Sometimes I think I’m smashing it. Those days are few and far between. When I’m working and running round doing extra work, housework, cooking work, tidying up after the children, I feel like I’m just about winging it.
But when the tantrum hits, my god do I feel like a full on A1 failure.
As a ‘first-time’ (only time) Mommy, I’m battling a bit of a psychological beast with the tantrum malarkey. I don’t want to nurture a spoilt demon who will hog all of the toys / books / space / food / attention of any facility or place he is in. My boy is mostly a good natured, clever and very funny little bean; I want him to stay that way and have beautiful manners and morals. I want him to know boundaries and rules. But I also do not want him to shame me in the middle of Stratford upon Avon with a full on facial worship of the tarmac. Or scream the house down for fifteen minutes because he wanted ‘the lion wellies Mommeeeeeeeee!’ and not the more coordinated and comfier trainers I put on him. What’s more (and maybe ridiculous) is a concern that my little boy will hate me because I’ve made him sad.
The Stratford treat was partly my fault. I had facilitated some of the issue when I allowed the beast to be released from the wheelie confines so that he could get up close to a ‘wow, red one!’ car. Cue the pushchair procrastination. He wanted to push it. Walk round it. Be carried next to it. But he did not want to go in it. Then he wanted to bewail to the very tarmac what a terrible time he was having at the hands of his selfish mother (I’m pretty sure those exact thoughts were in his head).
Who actually knows what they’re doing on this parenting road?
The shoes thing? Well. I don’t know what the hell motivated that. Other than a discerning preference for Next shoes over Primark ones…
I counselled. I reasoned. I ignored. He screamed. He screamed. I took the trainers off. When he was calm, I put his lion boots on.
I genuinely got the impression that he would have screamed all morning. Then I felt awful. His face was miserable and red from his temper. My face was miserable from his temper. I felt that he’d won. No.
I felt that I’d failed. I’d not avoided or averted the tantrum. I’d gone in to another part of the house to save my own sanity for a few minutes. I didn’t shout or bawl. I didn’t cuddle or cajole. I could ride this storm because I was at home.
On Saturday I saw another child prostrate in the middle of a shopping centre, wailing. Parents were caught between that double take, hands on hip ‘wtf’ of disbelief, the embarrassed glances about their shoulders for those judgemental passers by and flinging their own selves down in an angry demonstration of just how shit those terrible twos are. I didn’t stop to run a psych evaluation on their feelings or performance. I said a massive ‘thank you universe’ that my Toddler isn’t the only one. And I empathised.
I’m sure they threw all their shoulda, woulda, coulda at it afterwards. Or maybe they’re just more seasoned / less crazily over thinking than me… there are books and books and blogs telling me how I coulda shoulda dealt with trainer gate. I didn’t find one that said, explicitly, how rollercoaster the tantrum phase is. How for a moment you’ll wish you could boil your own head to block out the scream that’s biologically tuned to the perfect pitch of your personal fingers-on-chalk-board level of wince. How you’ll feel eaten up with guilt and regret and fatigue in the aftermath. How you’ll pick him up and smile that he’s ‘just at that phase’ (please god let it be a phase and a short one!) to find that there’s snot and tears all over your clothes much to his bipolar amusement… and then it’s over. The shit storm has passed. And that’s all it took to blow it over: snot on your shoulder. Even I laughed.
And then the cuddle. And a kiss. And the day went on in loveliness. And I wasn’t hated. And there’s been no more drama.
So three weeks in. I’m made of tough stuff. But I get the feeling that that stubborn gene has passed. And so on with the twos. The snotty, teary, screamy, shouty temper-tantrum-twos and all that lovely other mommy stuff that you forget about when The Toddler is throwing you a storm.
The T Plates 