Terrible After Two: The Battle Continues

By Kenda - June, 23rd 2013

It seems like I’ve been here before. It seems like I’ll always be here.

My child isn’t two, he’s almost four. He isn’t teething, hungry, bored or sick. He isn’t developmentally challenged, ADHD, autistic or SPD. He can speak his mind with a vocabulary more developed than some adults I know and can make his needs and wants known without a single hesitation. And those needs and wants never stop, never slacken, never pause. This isn’t a post about how children drive you crazy. It’s about how The Difficult Child controls nearly every aspect of your life….indefinitely.

When you decide to have a child your life is no longer your own. I get that. I got that 16 years ago when I had my first son. This, as they say, isn’t my first rodeo. I’m not going to lament the lack of wine time or drive anger into the hearts of devoted mothers everywhere by joking that I want to drop him off at the nearest rest stop (though I don’t begrudge those who do find the escapist humor in that). I just want to function normally.

I want to go to a family restaurant without having to eat as fast as possible because his present good mood is a ticking time bomb that could erupt into a tantrum about the way his napkin is folded.

I want to be able to drive somewhere farther than 15 minutes away without the fear that he’ll begin to unbuckle his car seat while screaming at the top of his lungs as I try to keep my eyes on the road.

I want to be able to work for more than 20 minutes at a time.

I want to sleep more than 3 hours a night.

I want other parents to stop telling me “do more with him, later bedtime, earlier bedtime, change his diet, stronger discipline, less discipline” when we’ve already done all of those things.

I want strangers to stop passing judgement with blame in their eyes and annoyance on their face as I frantically try to calm him in the middle of a 15 minute wait in the supermarket line when all I’m trying to do is buy my groceries and go home where ‘be still’ isn’t a required phrase.

I want people to understand that the child you see thrown on the airport floor with arms flailing and tears streaming isn’t always a product of bad parenting or lax discipline. They aren’t brats or monsters and no, there isn’t always a simple way to stop it. Sometimes mom and dad are ragged and worn; exhausted from the lack of sleep and the effort it takes to hang on the end of that rope hoping ‘it’s just a phase’ because all of the parenting books, advice and dedication to changing who they are in order to change how their child is do nothing to move them out of this constant struggle.

I want a better way to end this post; a profound revelation to make you stop and think. But it’s 4:46 am and this is the best I can do.

 

Image: I’m down, really down by Christophe Laurent. Creative Commons(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)