Terrible Twos and more

Muffin turned two about 2 weeks ago. Then he got sick. The two situations put together seemed to have triggered the Terrible Twos tantrums on a nuclear scale.

He is battling everything and everyone. He cries at the slightest provocation or anything remotely disagreeable to him. Water not poured quickly enough for him is enough to send him into a bawling tizzy. He spits out all his food. He flings his toys onto the ground quite angrily at any reproach. He has thrown himself onto the ground, regardless of cleanliness of ground and location.

It is plain exhausting and aggravating.

How do I manage it? Badly.

Within a hair of going insane and homicidal, I ignore him; for a good half an hour yesterday, every time he cried (He cried every time we tried to shovel a spoonful of food into his mouth), I turned my back to him and read a magazine. While that did stop him from crying, it did not encourage him to finish his dinner.

With every mouthful of food he spat out, I caught it in the spoon and shoved it back in his mouth. Rinse and repeat every time he spat it out. The record stands at 4 back and forths before he finally swallowed the spoonful. I ask the teachers in school if he does this there, he doesn't. I have half a mind to pay them to feed him dinner before I bring him home.

On every occasion that he flings something in anger, I smack both his wrists. Some people tell me that I should not smack. Whatever works for them.

I have put him in the corner. I have shut him up in a room. He potters around, he waits for me to let him out. I tell him to apologise and he does. But he goes right back to being a terror two seconds later.

So, this has left me at wits end and extremely short fused.

On top of that, there is Jordan, who thinks that this is a great time to push her limits. So she doesn't listen to me when I ask her to do things. Repeatedly she ignores me. She tunes me out. Until she realises that I have left her standing alone somewhere and am 50m away. Then, she comes running, crying, hysterical. She seems to think that instructions are meant to be ignored and she goes her merry way. Until I stop her and threaten her, threaten to withdraw something that she really wants, i.e. go out for dinner, her princess books...something, does she cooperate and that cooperation is as short lived as the memory of her mother being angry with her.

Thankfully, Evan has been a dream. He listens, he is by my side, he tries to police his siblings albeit unsuccessfully. But even he, with his little whining tendencies and complaining that his brother/ sister or both have taken away something of his, poked/bumped/hit/smacked/touched him in some way has incurred my wrath.

I have taken to punishing all 3 even if one is clearly the perpetrator and the other the victim and bystander. Equal misery. Don't mess with Mommy. And stick up for one another. Not rat one another out.


















I guess it is too much to ask that the house is harmonious like that all the time.


Whatever it is, parenting right now is driving me a bit over the edge. I am thinking seriously of renting out my children separately, for a while, just so that I can regain some sanity, sleep in and possibly laugh a little before this stern, pissed off look that I perpetually have on my face freezes and I am stuck with it for life.

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