The Myth of the Terrible Twos

My son officially turned 2 this month and I should say, aside from the constant chasing we had to do because of his newfound ability to run, there's really nothing too terrible about him being two. In fact, I discovered that there is a lot more to love with my kid now compared to when he was just a useless newborn.

Yes. Newborns are useless and needy and too hard to figure out. Until this day, I just thank the universe that I managed to keep my child alive.

Now back to toddlers, I wonder how TWOs got its terrible reputation in the first place?

Myth #1: Tantrums

Tantrum is supposed to be the sign that the terrible TWO is around. My child throws tantrums occasionally, and I don't think that he throws a tantrum just to give me a hard time. He doesn't seem to be comfortable at all when he screeches at the top of his lungs, tears rolling down his cheek, his face flushed red, insisting that he gets his way.

But I see tantrums as a form of communication. Toddlers already have a mind of their own; they are quite independent and can explore things without adult help. However, though they already have enough vocabulary at this time to express most of their interests, it doesn't really capture the entire spectrum of their wants and desires.

Imagine yourself in the toddler's shoes. You are enjoying crawling around like a worm on the floor and suddenly, an adult says, "Bath." You know what bath means, but you're not that interested in the activity because crawling around on the floor is a lot more fun than getting a bath. You can utter a "No" and hope that that settles the argument. So, you go back to the task on hand: crawling on the floor.

But then, you still get snatched up. Because you do not exactly have the words to exclaim, "Hey, I was busy being a worm!", you instead wail and flail and perhaps scream "No" more because why can't mommy understand that I am not yet done doing this?

From an adult's point of view, it looks like the child was being difficult. Maybe even being defiant. But to the child, he was doing something and he wasn't ready to do whatever activity you were making him do. There is no concept here of "It's already 8, so we have to take a bath" or "Mommy is tired so I should just follow her and go to bed." This is just a tiny human learning how to be a human.

It would surprise you that one effective way to avoid tantrums or lessen the intensity of the tantrum is to give enough time for the kid to transition to the next activity. Explain that he has five minutes to finish his activity because the next one is coming up. You will be surprised at how much a child understands even though you do not hear them say the words. I even encourage my kid to say good bye to things he plays with. When he says "Good bye", I know that he has decided that has had enough of playing and is ready to move on with mommy to the next activity.

If he refuses, I still get him away from the activity, and if he goes into a meltdown, I try to do it with a lot of kindness. I tell him that I am sorry and I know that he is sad because we stopped playing downstairs, but we already have to take a bath. Sometimes, the explanation soothes him, and in other times, he continues crying. Either way, my son knows that there are really things we must do and no amount of tantrums can change it. Just try to find something that would distract your child's attention.

Myth #2: Disobedience, Defiance, and the favorite word, "No"

As mentioned before, your toddler is still learning the mechanics of being human. If you put it in that context, everything that they're doing isn't done to deliberately upset you, but simply because they are trying to learn the way the world works.

You tell them to STOP or NOT do something, but they continue to do it anyway. Firstly, the child doesn't understand why you're stopping him from doing an activity. When he can't see immediate consequences to his actions, then he there is no motivation for him to stop. For example, if you tell him to stop jumping on the bed which is a favorite activity of most toddlers, they do not understand that a possible result of their continued jumping is them falling down and hitting their head. So, they just continue doing the activity.

Of course, you wouldn't want to wait for that moment when your child breaks his head to pop out of nowhere and say "I told you so!" In these cases, you just have to exercise patience in repeating house rules. There are, however, a lot of teachable moments and that requires allowing your child to make mistakes so that they can learn from it. For instance, when a child insists that he drinks by himself from the glass, that is good! But some parents intervene because they are afraid of the mess it will create when the glass falls. In my opinion, the mess should be secondary to developing your child's independence. If the glass falls, it's the perfect time to point out that that's the consequence for not holding the glass properly. In time, allowing these mistakes will help your toddler become a more capable human.

In connection to disobedience and defiance, parents have a tendency of saying "No" to a lot of things and not following through. For instance, you tell a child NOT to get a certain thing but he is still able to get it anyway. The child learns that you can say "No" and not mean it. OR another situation is that you say "No" initially and the child throws a tantrum as a result. So you allow him to continue doing something or get what he wants because you don't want to deal with the tantrum. In the same way, the child learns not to take "NO" seriously.

It is important to keep in mind that it is also not good to keep saying "NO". You have to use "NO" sparingly so that it would be taken seriously. That means, if you really don't want something touched (like a really expensive vase), keep it out of reach or hide anything that you don't want your kid to play with. Another way to avoid "NO" is to rephrase the correction in a positive statement. Instead of saying, "No running", just say "Let's walk." In Filipino, I say it as "Lakad lang". You also deliver it in a tone that sounds like a reminder rather than a reprimand.

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Toddlers are really out to test boundaries and it is our role as parents to set the limits and make those limitations clear. Anytime they fail to follow, it's not because they want to upset us or because we are failing as parents. No one learns the intricacies of human life in just a few years. We, as adults, still commit a lot of social faux pas despite having more years to master dealing with other humans; we should also give enough allowances for the mistakes of our tiny humans-in-training.

Keep in mind as well that we have to be careful with how we deal with the child's misbehavior. When I say toddlers are learning to be human, that includes the way we deal with their mistakes. Everything we literally do gets filed somewhere in their little brains to be used for a future applicable situation. So, BEWARE!