Hear, Don’t Listen: The Terrible Twos
Every day, I wake up planning on being a better mother to my two-year-old tyrant; who isn’t really a tyrant, but when she is bad, she is horrid.
She didn’t start out terrible – they never do. When she was a baby it was all coos and giggles, but when she started talking and learning to exert her “independence” and I started trying to control her behaviour, the shit hit the fan.
Since it is up to me to show her who is in charge (big hint: it isn’t me) I had this amazingly stupid brilliant idea that she would respect my authority and instantly straighten up once she heard THAT tone in my voice and snap to it when I asked her to do something.
When I emerged from that rabbit hole to find that she hadn’t, in fact, drank my particular brand of Kool-Aid, I was shocked.
“What do you mean, ‘She’s TWO!’ She is old enough to know to not hit or bite, and old enough to know when I MEAN it!”
Oh, what a fool I am.
What the experts mean, exactly (I may be paraphrasing), is that two years old = little giant asshole until they learn how to properly express this massive wellspring of emotion that crops up out of nowhere, usually because you clothed them in the pants they specifically asked you to put on them.
This is where I, as the parent, am supposed to model the proper response behavior for her (i.e. patience and understanding) so she learns that throwing her sippy cup across the room is really not a logical response to me asking her to wait a second for her umpteenth juice refill.
This is where I failed.
Instead, in all my wisdom in trying to control her behavior with sternness and raising my voice I taught her that aggression is an acceptable response to anything she doesn’t like.
So last night, when she was throwing herself around her bedroom and raging like a feral cat, I stood in the hallway, outside her closed door, and broke.
I broke because I don’t know how to not react; I feel like I am still learning how to control my own emotions since becoming a mother.
It broke me that I had to walk away. It broke me that I was unable to calm my own child.
And do you know what happened? She stopped screaming. I opened the door to find a little girl who had dealt with her emotions her way. She handed me the glasses she had ripped from my face just ten minutes earlier, along with her favourite book and asked me to read to her.
We sat together on the floor and read her book while she held my hand. When the last page was turned and the story over, she climbed into bed and told me she loved me.
While I have been trying to control her, she has been trying to teach me the wisdom in sometimes walking away to give (and take) some breathing room. I have been ordering and snapping, and she has been pushing to get some space to cool off.
As parents, we all feel like we have to be there every minute of every day; otherwise we are absentee parents.
I call bullshit.
This morning I dropped her off at daycare and went to a place that has always restored my soul. Originally, I intended to bring her along with me; however, in her wisdom, she has taught me a valuable lesson about space: that I need mine too.
Because of last night, and because I took some time for myself today, I am better equipped to walk away and allow the space we both will need when she throws her inevitable tantrum later tonight.
I didn’t like my kid last night, but I didn’t like myself either. It’s not her fault, nor is it mine.
We are in this together, and we’ll figure it out together.
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