Banning the Terrible Two's

My daughter is at the age where “no” has snuck itself into her daily vocabulary and emotional outbursts are to be expected regularly. Just the other day she had a hysterical meltdown that had I not watched it unfold, I would have thought something horrific had happened.  But nope.

She spilt water on the couch.

That was it.

And oh the tragedy! She wailed, “AGUAAAAAAA!” and repeatedly tried to scoop up the water.

I comforted her even though in my head I am thinking this is completely absurd, kid; But I was also wondering if this was a preview of the months ahead. For the record, I don’t really like the phrase “Terrible Twos”. It sounds menacing and makes me think it’s the title of a horror movie with a cheesy tagline: dreadful things come in pairs!

Joking aside, I think adopting that mentality might give me more apprehension than I need. When my daughter starts having a major meltdown I try to remind myself of the quote:

 “Your child isn’t giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time.”

 And that nugget of truth is what helps guide how I decide to handle her when she’s flailing angrily on the floor in full-on tantrum mode.  Because the thing about this age is that they are on the cusp of communication. No longer an infant, she has a growing ability to express her wants and needs. Between sign language and a grasp of English and Spanish, my daughter can typically tell me in some mixture of the above three what’s going on in that little head of hers.

However even this is still limited (at this point, I’m not sure if she was upset because the couch was wet or if she was sad that some of the water was gone)  and so it’s frustrating for her (and okay, sometimes me!)  when she so desperately wants to get her point across but it’s falling on what would appear, deaf ears.

Not only that, this is about the age where children start to desire autonomy. They want to feed themselves, pick out their clothes (or in my kid’s case, choose not to wear anything at all) and make decisions for themselves even if at this point it’s as simple as not to take a nap.

Do I cater to her every whim? No, but even at 20 months old, I am trying to set the foundation for lifelong communication. I help her label her feelings, give her a choice to calm down. So when she starts to get worked up about wearing clothes, for instance, I try to handle it like this:

Rosie: “NO!” (cue flailing, twisting away from me)

Me: Okay, Rosie. If you don’t want to wear clothes that’s fine but then we can’t go outside.

Rosie: “Outside?” (she stops crying instantly, hearing her favorite word).

Me: “Yep, you need to wear clothes to go outside.” 

And almost like magic she is calm, excited about the prospect of going outside. Obviously not every situation will work out that neatly and may require a little bit of creative thinking and sometimes she is so worked up that the only answer is to give a few minutes to calm herself down. It helps to give her options, feed that sense of "choice". 

This is what’s worked for us and I only hope we can keep going and banish the “Terrible Twos” from our vocab.