August 22, Edwardsburg.
Yesterday was one of those trying days with the kids (hello euphemisms, child-raising decorum salvage tools.)
Dylan was hysterical by eight thirty in the morning, and it went up from there. I sort of lost it over lunch, the quintessential trying time, one more time Dylan refusing to eat, only he was going to beg and cry for cereals or crackers later on today as he always does, he was obviously tired and out of control, and Nicolas adding his bit complaining for this or that, being a typical 17-month-old, and hours of variations on this theme and I ended up dragging a crying Dylan to his crib.
I know oh so well that by screaming at them I not only fail to solve anything but also behave exactly like them and not as the adult and magnanimous person it is my responsibility to be, I know that when they're tired they get out of control, I know all that, but sometimes, just sometimes, and Dylan hitting or biting Nicolas and then smiling as if he was taunting me, day after day, that is a good recipe for my failing. I try and I try and I do get better, attitudes are caught, not taught, as I once read an Amish web site, and then sometimes I fail, like yesterday, although mostly I just sobbed out of frustration, and he was in bed and fast asleep long before I had stopped crying.
The books you read tell you that you should give your toddlers time outs. Time outs? I never could understand how exactly that worked, how your out-of-control caveman, as Dr. Harvey Karp appropriately calls them (his books were incredibly helpful when Dylan and Nicolas were infants, and again now, although the game has gotten a lot trickier,) will magically stay put, calmly absorbing the lesson you are giving him, in a corner or in a room, all by himself, while you go and have yourself a cup of tea, and how that will work in a home the size of a closet is even more doubtful.
I wish children came with a manual.
NB: deceptive picture/creature.
3 comments:
Dearest Valerie, How I wish I was there. I don't know if I would have been any help-distracting Dylan maybe? But I wish I was there with a big hug, tea and sweets. Love Beverly
When Max -- now 21 and a sophmore at Stanford -- was a toddler he used to have tantrums so severe I thought his head would go round 180 degrees and he'd start talking like the kid in The Exorcist. One day I got so frustrated, I put him in a room with the vacuum cleaner on fulll blast (so I wouldn't have to hear him) and shut the door.
I think I threw myself on the sofa and wept. I really can't remember.
Two minutes later I crept back into that room. Max had fallen asleep! He was overstimulated or something. The white noise of the vacuum cleaner was just what he had needed apparently.
My point being not that you should lock Dylan in a room with a vacuum cleaner, but that children are very resilient -- far more resilient than their mothers, I often suspect -- and that it takes a lot to fuck them up.
Cut yourself a lot of slack. Mothering two toddlers is a lot of work. Add driving a hundred miles a day and no wonder you're feeling overwhelmed.
Patrizia
Oh thank you both so much, that means a lot to me.
Rest assured, in retrospect it wasn't that bad (now that I've read the Exorcist tantrum!), and I shouldn't complain because 99% of the time Dylan is an adorable kid, considerate and kind, and I'm very lucky with him.
Toddlers get tired and overstimulated, as you said, and that too will pass, as one of the midwives that helped deliver Dylan once told me, wisdom that is still saving me.
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