I'm not sure why it's called the "Terrible Two's" it should be renamed the "Don't Feel Bad About Locking Your Child in a Padded and Sound Proofed Room so You Don't Strangle Them Stage." I was expecting my daughter to be the most terrible of twos but I just am not sure how to go about this anymore. My daughter does not listen or heed to ANY form of discipline. I even have seasoned mom's baffled as to what I should do with her. She does not care one ounce about Time-Outs, a swat to the bum does nothing but give her a slight evil stare towards me, taking away toys, refusing her treats and even sending her to bed has little to no reaction.
How do you instil that overwhelming feeling that "my parents are the BOSS," into your children? I remember being terrified of the prospect of getting spanked or having my mom disappointed in me. I can tell my daughter doesn't care either way.
The day before yesterday was a day that will go down in the records of being one of the most patience trying days of them all. I was going about doing my usual laundry, dishes, cleaning up after breakfast routine. The kids were playing in the living room. I went into my bedroom to put a few pieces of folded clothing into their proper locations and I could hear "Would you like some tea Pooh bear?" Splash, splash, splash. It was that part (the splash, splash, splash) that made me nervous. So I opened up my door and my daughter was scooping water out of the toilet with her tea-cup set and drinking it. Needless to say my first reaction was NOT one of patience and calm.
Later that same day we went into the office of the company I've worked in the past 9 years. I'm currently back there once a week to teach a course for them and am now applying for a position that will greatly help not only my financial situation but will also allow me to parent my children full time. Regardless I brought my children into work with me because I needed to do a few things. Usually going to the office is fun for me because there are several people there wanting to hold the baby and hang out with my daughter. This was not the case. It turns out it was a meeting day so there I was left all by myself to not only tend to my children but get said work accomplished. My kids ran around the building like each room they stepped into caught on fire and they had to escape as fast as they could. Exhausted but finished it was finally time to leave and I had the baby in one arm and some paperwork in the other. I asked my daughter to follow me. She looked and me and said "NO!" I said "Ok fine, bye-bye." Usually this works. She will follow me out the door because she loves the prospect of going somewhere. She then turned on her heels and ran as fast as she could in the other direction. I gave her about 2 minutes because I figured that she would come running as soon as she felt a little uncomfortable in her surroundings. I began getting nervous when she didn't come back. I was sure she had found something that interested her and was now getting into mischief. It took me about 10 minutes to find her. I LOST that battle spectacularly.
Now here's where most smart mothers would have turned around and taken their kids straight home...but NO. I had to go grocery shopping. Up until now it hasn't been too much of an issue going grocery shopping with both kids. My son was still little so he would stay nice and secure in his infant car seat and placed side ways on top of the cart, my daughter would be strapped in and locked in the buggy area. Well recently my giant of a son grew out of his infant car seat so I've now had to move him to the buggy area. This was also not a problem as of recently because my husband was with me and able to help with the shopping but now that he's gone for 6 weeks there is an issue, not only do I NOT have any help but if I do not get groceries we starve. This now means my daughter is "walking" beside the cart with me. I tried the put her in the cart with the groceries method, that didn't pan out well because she poked 1000 holes in the various bags of produce, squished the bread and opened the boxes trying to eat the contents. There are also zero grocery stores in town (we live in a small place) that have any double buggy carts. I would honestly switch my regular shopping destination if ANY of the places got better carts. Now she walks beside me. I try to keep her interested in helping me push the cart. It's all good until she sees something she wants and goes running for it. I should've known that it was NOT a good day to be doing the shopping with the kids because it's one of those things that normally takes an entire FULL TANK of patience (which had been drained earlier from said events). The trip started off a little rocky, I had to pry some fruit and vegetables out of her quick little hands and continuously remind her to hold onto the cart and not let go but it came to a head when I went to reach for a box of cereal and she pulled the two bottom boxes of Mac and Cheese Dinners from the bottom of a pyramid display at the end of the isle. Needless to say the display tumbled to the ground causing quite the scene and noise. All I know what happened after is I went into what I'm going to refer as "The Zone." I think it's the point where you clamp your teeth shut, you tune most foreign noises and stimulus out and try not to visualize too strongly about strangling your kids. I grabbed my daughter's hand, apologised to the kid coming to rebuild the Temple of KD and finished the shopping. Now there are few things my kid hates more than me holding her hand or holding her back. She LOST it. Was screaming bloody murder and flailing around so most of the hand holding was actually me dragging her around by one arm. I know that the other patrons of the store were looking at me with disgust and contempt but what was I to do, we were out milk?
I ended up winning in the end. I A)did NOT kill my child, B)got all items on my list marked off and C)put my child into her room for a 3 hour nap. It did however drain my Patience Tank to Zero and used up half the tank for the next day. Needless to say we did NOT leave the house yesterday and I think we're staying home today too. I'm not quite recovered.
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