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From my book, THE 7 STAGES OF MOTHERHOOD
"When Maddie was a toddler, I tried to help her gain more of a sense of control by choreographing a very predictable exit routine. We would pick a favorite book or video—one that I knew by heart (rarely a problem, given her insatiable appetite for repetition)—and decide together when I would leave; for example, “at the picture of the smiley truck” or “when Big Bird sneezes.” A couple of times I made the mistake of hanging around beyond the sneeze, only to have Maddie say impatiently, “Okay, Mama. Go now.”
This approach played out even more dramatically one night when Nick was about two. It was way past his bedtime and we were both exhausted, but he was putting me through the wringer. I would sing a song, pat his terry rump, say good night, and try to exit, only to watch him hurl himself against the crib rail and launch a cry guaranteed to wake the dead. I reentered the fray, but this time I sat down in the rocking chair in the corner of his room and said, “Okay, Nick. You tell me when I can go.” You could practically hear the brakes in his brain screeching to a halt. His eyes widened slightly as he slid down onto his belly, and in a voice husky with power, he barked, “GO OUT!” I tried not to skip across the threshold of his room.
Of course there were many more times when I simply lowered my horns and pawed the ground, chanting “I will not submit” under my hot breath. Those scenes were not pretty. I recall the morning I forcibly stripped off Nick’s sopping diaper (he had wanted to open the tabs himself) and then attempted to reason with my outraged, shrieking son for forty-five minutes, only to hear Maddie cry in frustration, “For gosh sakes, Mom, just put the wet diaper back on!” I fished the five-pound (now cold) trophy out of the trash, slapped it on Nick, and watched as, narrow shoulders still heaving, he gingerly removed the tabs, stepped over the soggy diaper, and lay down on the floor so I could put on the clean one.
The story seems sitcom-worthy now, but at the time I was not laughing. I felt stupid and diminished—a loser in more ways than one. My friend Nancy Samalin, author of several excellent books on discipline, thinks parents do lose if they give in only because they’re desperate to avoid “the happiness trap,” so named because we get trapped into never letting our children experience disappointment. Letting a toddler whine you into submission every time he wants another cookie or caving at the first pissed-off peep is not what your little tyrant wants. She longs for limits, because the world is big and highly unpredictable.
According to T. Berry Brazelton, one of the reasons to let your little guy experience frustration, fury, and the calm after the storm is that it provides a sense of mastery over anxiety and an inner sense of success. I wish I had known that when Maddie threw her first tantrum—an experience so shocking that I wanted to run screaming from the supermarket.
There are dozens of theories about how to handle tantrums—from walking away to spanking. Needless to say, I don’t subscribe to the latter; fighting out-of-control behavior with out-of-control behavior doesn’t make a lot of sense. All spanking teaches a child is that a big person can use his strength to hurt a little person. And I think the former only works if you let your screaming Mimi know you’re nearby, willing to help if you can. But when you’re in public, your concern for your child’s safety goes head-to-head with feelings of humiliation. You imagine that dozens of your fellow shoppers are rolling their eyes, tsk-tsking their way around you, and labeling your child a spoiled brat, product of a bad mother. And you’re probably right. Strangers just love to tell themselves that they would never let their child get away with that kind of behavior—especially those who have never had kids. The best way to deal with judgmental know-nothings is to chant softly to yourself, “I don’t know these people. I’ll never see them again. I don’t give a damn what they think of me.”
If “these people” happen to be your own relatives, the scene can devolve quickly. Judy recalled a visit with her parents one summer that included a full-fledged meltdown by her two-year-old son, Nate. “His tantrums were never easy to handle. And this one was a doozy. He was screaming and kicking the floor and making a hell of a racket, but I was handling it. Or thought I was handling it, until my mother put her head in the room and said that Nate would just have to stop because he was disturbing the neighbors and it just wouldn’t do to have all this noise. That was when I lost it,” Judy admitted. “I screamed for her to get out and leave us alone, with the same intensity as Nate.”
When she reflected on the scene later, Judy realized how deeply rooted her rage had been. “I guess I was reacting to my mother’s screwed-up priorities, which have hurt me in countless ways over the years. The fact that she was more concerned about the neighbors than about my needs brought back a lot of feelings I didn’t know were still there.”
Obviously, our mothers’ lives and how we experienced their love shape our interactions with our toddlers. Whether your mother was a positive or negative role model, a happy or an angry force, authoritarian or liberal, you will consciously or unconsciously make choices every day that reflect her influence. If you were spared the rod, rarely reprimanded, never ridiculed, you may be burdened with far more guilt regarding your own anger when it does bubble up. Women whose mothers’ dreams of a career were frustrated by family responsibilities may overcompensate on the job front; young mothers whose working moms were rarely around may swear they’ll do it differently.
When Twos Are Terrible
It takes enormous energy, self-control, compassion, creativity, and wisdom to get through a day with a toddler, yet we all hold on to unrealistic expectations of seamless transitions, hours of independent play, moments of crystal-clear communication. But that’s just not possible. The “Terrible Twos” were so named not because these years are unrelentingly awful but because the intensely joyful highs are offset by the inevitable and often painful lows. If you’re in a good mood, if you’re rested, well fed, energized, and calm, then almost anything your toddler chucks your way will bounce right off. Better yet, you’ll be able to ride through the storm and show your little guy the rainbow on the other side. But if you’ve had a bad day, a sleepless night, no chance for a decent meal or a phone call to a friend, no opportunity to talk to an adult or glance at the newspaper or make your own bed, then your toddler’s psychotic reaction to being denied access to your jewelry box may make you want to do something really ugly.
Research shows that rates of depression are twice as high among women with toddlers as they are for other mothers. In her book The Sacrificial Mother, Carin Rubinstein hypothesizes that depression is the cost of self-sacrifice, of constantly giving, giving, giving—time, attention, empathy, understanding—with very little “payback.” Certainly, the emotional drain of sacrificing so much can take its toll, but so can the frustration and anger. When your toddler hurls his bowl of sauced macaroni off the table—the macaroni you cooked just the way he likes it—murderous thoughts may flash though your mind. But you don’t act on those thoughts. You may not even give them voice; instead, you turn your rage inward, where it sits like a lead weight on your chest. Dragging around a lead apron is exhausting. It’s also a fairly apt description of what it feels like to be depressed.
Giving yourself permission to walk out of the room, close the door, scream, punch a pillow, or simply exhale not only enables you to gain some control, but it models exactly the kind of behavior your child is trying to master. When you say, “I’m very angry right now. I need to be alone so I can calm down,” your toddler may not understand a single word you’ve said, but he’ll absorb fully the benefits a self-imposed time-out can provide.
Give Yourself (and Your Toddler) a Break
Modeling the importance of boundaries, carving out a little Mom time in the middle of the day can be particularly tough during the toddler years. I remember how important it was to have a six-minute reentry routine at the end of my workday. I would greet Maddie briefly and then announce I was going to change into my play clothes. She rarely protested because I never equivocated. I needed to stand in my closet, slowly peel off my suit and panty hose, and then, just as gradually, trade my work uniform for something soft and forgiving. Often I turned out the light and spent the last minute breathing deeply in the dark. By the time I joined her in the living room, I was much better prepared to plunge into our evening routine.
And you need all the adrenaline you can pump through your veins when you’re mothering a toddler. I had forgotten how exhilarating and exhausting it can be to follow a two-year-old as she gallops, leaps, dances, and dives through her day when my friend Jackie happened to drop by with her twin boys. Once sprung from their double stroller, they ricocheted off the furniture like human pinballs. Michael charged up and down a small series of steps with the focus of a kamikaze trainee, while Peter, still a little wobbly on his feet, made a beeline for a bowl of nuts I had forgotten to move. “How do you do this every day?” I asked Jackie, who used to be a personal trainer. She shrugged and laughed, just as Michael dove into her arms from a chair. “Thank God I’m in good physical shape,” she replied, lifting thirty pounds of boy into the air.
I complimented Jackie on her expertise as a “spotter,” ready to help if absolutely necessary but willing to let her boys tumble and fumble their way through our living room. I failed spotting. I tended to hover, helicopter-like, on the perimeters of Maddie or Nick’s play, poised to swoop in and help out. As much as I may have saved them from frustration, I often deprived them of the supreme satisfaction of mastering a task or practicing a skill. Your little guy desperately yearns to do and try and test and do again. Experiencing frustration just makes the victory that much sweeter.
Recognizing your toddler’s competence and resilience can be incredibly liberating. It enables you to rethink many of the separations that can feel punitive and cruel. Take sleeping. If the message to your toddler is “I know you can put yourself to sleep” rather than “I hate to do this, but it’s for your own good,” the emphasis shifts from your willpower to your child’s competence. Bedtime becomes a chance to help him overcome his fears, to learn to soothe himself, to relax. Obviously, this doesn’t happen in one night, but a change in your attitude is the critical first step.
Some arenas may prove more challenging than others. It’s very hard to back off and let your toddler lead the way when it comes to food, which is why most mothers of toddlers report that feeding is second only to bedtime in terms of frustration and stress. We all come with buttons installed many moons ago by our well-meaning but inexperienced parents, so if food and eating were highly-charged issues in your family, then you may also have a host of relatives turning up the volume of the “he eats like a bird” refrain.
Rather than obsess over a day when your toddler has eaten nothing but goldfish crackers and apple juice, keep track of an entire week’s worth of grazing. You will undoubtedly discover—as countless studies have corroborated—that children will eat when they’re hungry. Your job is to offer plenty of healthy options, not to force your toddler to clean his plate.
“Take the long view”’ should become your mantra during the toddler years. Challenges that throw you off balance or keep you up at night may, within a couple of months, seem like minor blips on the radar screen. Problems that seem overwhelming and scary often resolve themselves.
Feeling Pulled in Two Directions
One of the pleasures of this stage is an older toddler’s increased ability to engage in pretend play. When Maddie was close to three she would regularly act out vignettes inspired by her favorite Disney heroines. I recall hours of playing the prince to her eyelash-batting Sleeping Beauty or pretending not to notice the tsunami of tub water washed on the bathroom floor by my shy Little Mermaid. Her dress-up games also included scenarios of heart-stopping realism. One Sunday morning she chose as her prop an old briefcase, into which she stuffed pieces of construction paper and assorted envelopes before announcing, “I going to work now, sweetie.” Shoving her pudgy hands into my gloves, she added in a voice dripping with pity and remorse, “And I out to dinner. And I not coming back until later tomorrow late.” As she stepped into a pair of my shoes and clattered down the hallway, I felt the pinch of hers. “I call you later!” she sang out. The pinch, the sting, the heartache, as she disappeared into the coat closet.
Along with her independence came the anxiety born of her awareness that I was a separate person. Like all toddlers, she went through a phase when her play consisted of little, darting trips away from me, followed quickly by a return to the safety of my presence. She wanted my full attention so badly that she would put her hands on my cheeks and direct my head her way. Or she would imperiously bark an order at me, only to reject my help. Her confusion about her place in the world paralleled my own at times. I wanted to be there for her, but I also valued my space at my job, with Steve, and with my friends. Anticipating her entrance into preschool and her reliance on other adults and on her peers for emotional support, I experienced an intense need to connect with her babyness and, at the same time, to find a way to let her fly. It was probably no coincidence that one of our favorite games during Maddie’s toddler years was “birdie in the nest,” which involved creating a comfortable nest of couch pillows and then sending my little bird around the living room in search of food. The best part, of course, was when she would come flying back into my arms."
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